
Class ___L_Li- 
Book :.§j£- 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



CONFERENCE 



FOR 



Education in the South 

THE SIXTH SESSION 



Richmond, Va. 

April 22d to April 24TH 



The University of Virginia 

April 25TH 



1903 



Issued by the Committee on Publication. 
Room 60/, No. 54 William St., New York City. 
By irasisfer 



EDITOR'S NOTE. 



The delay in the publication of the present volume has been due 
to the fact that the work of revision fell largely within the vacation 
period, when some of the contributors were inaccessible to the mails. 
It is hoped that the publication will prove not merely a record of the 
proceedings of the Conference, but a serious and permanent contri- 
bution to the subject of public education in the Southern States. 

The notes of the stenographer have been followed somewhat 
closely. Some of the informal expressions from the platform, and 
some of the indications of " applause," have been retained. The re- 
tention of these more passing phases of expression has been due to 
the fact that these pages are not the mere records of an impersonal 
and scholastic discussion, but the printed memorial of a very vital 
and vivid occasion. With especial reference to the indications of 
" applause," it may be said that what a representative audience 
heartily approves is often quite as significant, to the serious student 
of popular movements, as what the speaker says. 

On the evening of Sunday, the twenty-sixth of April, there was 
held in the Academy of Music, at Richmond, a memorial service in 
commemoration of the life and public activities of the late Dr. J. 
L. M. Curry. The addresses delivered on this occasion will be found 
in the appendix to this volume. 

E. G. M. 
Montgomery, Alabama, October lo, ipo^. 



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TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Business Sessions of the Conference 9, 133, 217 

The Address of Welcome 15 

By the Hon. A. J. Montague, Governor of Virginia. 

The Annual Address of the President 18 

By Mr. Robert C. Ogden, of New York City. 
The Work of the Southern Education Board in Alabama 33 

By the Hon. Joseph B. Graham, of Talladega, Ala. 
The Work of the Bureau of Investigation and Informa- 
tion 37 

By Dr. Charles W. Dabney, President of the University of 
Tennessee. 
The Work of the Southern Education Board in Virginia 47 
By Dr. Hollis Burke Frissell, Principal of Hampton Insti- 
tute. 
The Work of the Southern Education Board in Loui- 
siana AND Mississippi 57 

By Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, President of Tulane Univer- 
sity, New Orleans. 
The Work of the Southern Education Board in North 

Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia 63 

By Dr. Charles D. M elver. President of the State Normal 
College, Greensboro, N. C. 

The North and the South 74 

By Dr. St. Clair McKelway, Editor the Brooklyn Eagle. 
The Consolidation of Schools and Transportation of 

Pupils 85 

By Mr. George H. Hulvey, Superintendent of Schools, 
Bridgewater, Va. 
The Consolidation of Schools and Transportation of 

Pupils 89 

By Mr. G. P. Glenn, Superintendent of Schools, Jackson- 
ville, Fla. 

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6 The Conference for Education. 

PAGE 

Discussion 94 

By W. W. Stetson, State Superintendent of Education for 
Maine, and the Rev. J. B. Hawthorne, D. D., of Rich- 
mond, Va. 

A Model School 99 

By P. P. Claxton, Professor in the University of Tennes- 
see. 

Educational Progress in Mississippi 103 

By Dr. R. B. Fulton, Chancellor of the University of Mis- 
sissippi. 

Education Through Agriculture 109 

By Dr. L. H. Bailey, Professor of Agriculture in Cornell 
University. 

An Aspect of Educational Work in Louisiana 123 

By B. C. Caldwell, President of the Louisiana State Normal 
School. 

Knowledge and Service 126 

By Dr. Francis G. Peabody, Professor in Harvard Univer- 
sity. 

The Needs of the New South 136 

By Dr. Lyman Hall, President of the Georgia histitute of 
Technology. 

The Progress of Southern Education 142 

By Josephus Daniels, Esq., Editor of the Raleigh, N. C, 
News and Observer. 

Educational Work in Georgia 155 

By W. B. Merritt, State Superintendent of Education for 
Georgia. 

The Education of Farmers 159 

By Dr. David F. Houston, President of the Agricultural 
and Mechanical College of Texas. 

The Teacher and the State 168 

By Dr. J. H. Kirkland, Chancellor of Vanderbilt University. 
The Work of the University in the Southern States. . . 177 
By Dr. F. P. V enable. President of the University of North 
Carolina. 

The University in the South 180 

By Edzvin Mims, Professor in Trinity College, Durham 
N. C. 



Contents. 7 

PAGE 

The Place of the University in Modern Life i86 

By Wickliffe Rose, Professor in the University of Tennes- 
see. 
The Aid of the Citizen to the Cause of Public Education 190 
By Dr. S. C. Mitchell, Professor in Richmond College. 

The Better Schoolhouse ■ 193 

By J. Y. Joyner, State Superintendent of Education for 
North Carolina. 

Public Education and the Local Tax 197 

By Isaac W. Hill, State Superintendent of Education for 
Alabama. 

Public Education and the Local Tax 199 

By G. R. Glenn, Former State Superintendent of Education 
for Georgia. 
The Responsibility of the Government for Public Edu- 
cation 203 

By Mr. R. Fulton Cutting, of New York City. 

Negro Education in the South 206 

By Dr. Walter B. Hill, Chancellor of the University of 
Georgia. 

Report of the Committee on Resolutions 217 

By Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, of New York City. 

An Address 218 

By Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, of New York City. 

Impressions of the Conference 221 

By Dr. Lyman Abbott, Editor of The Outlook. 

Address of Welcome at the University of Virginia 231 

By Dr. Paul B. Barringer, Chairman of the Faculty. 

Response of the President of the Conference 232 

By Mr. Robert C. Ogden, of New York City. 

The University and the Public Schools 234 

By Dr. Charles W. Kent, Professor in the University of 
Virginia. 

An Address 237 

By Dr. Francis G. Peabody, Professor in Harvard Univer- 
sity. 

Thomas Jefferson as an Educator 240 

By Dr. R. Heath Dabney, Professor in the University of 
Virginia. 



8 . The Conference for Education. 

PAGE 

An Address 244 

By Dr. Charles W. Dahney, President of the University of 
Tennessee. 

APPENDIX. 

A Service in Commemoration of the Late Dr. J. L. M. 

Curry 251 

An Address 251 

By Dr. F. W. Boatwright, President of Richmond College. 

A Memorial Hymn 256 

An Address 257 

By Dr. Edivin A. Alderman, President of Tulane Univer- 
sity, New Orleans, La. 



REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS 

OF THE 

Sixth Session of the Conference for 
Education in the South 



BUSINESS SESSION 

The Academy of Music, Richmond, Va, 

3.30 p. M., Wednesday, April 22, 1903. 

The Conference was called to order by the president, Mr. 
Robert C. Ogden, of New York City, at 3.30 o'clock p. m. 

The President: — Ladies and Gentlemen, At the last meeting 
of the Conference for Education in the South, the executive com- 
mittee was charged with the responsibility of the selection of the 
next place of meeting. They have decided upon the acceptance of 
the invitation of the city of Richmond, and various bodies repre- 
senting education in this community, to hold our Sixth Annual Con- 
ference in this city. Wherefore, under the authority delegated to 
the executive committee by the Conference last year, I have the 
pleasure of calling to order at this place the Sixth Annual Meeting 
of the Conference for Education in the South. 

The proceedings this afternoon will be of a very simple char- 
acter, it being the intent to prepare for the work of the Conference 
by attention to such details of business, not very numerous, as are 
necessary for our orderly proceeding. 

The Conference for Education in the South is not a definitely 
organized body; it has no credit, it professes no particular form 

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lo The Conference for Education. 

of religion. But it is dominated by a Christian spirit, and has always 
incidentally, but very positively, recognized the influence of the 
Christian religion as an ally and a necessary support to all true 
education. Therefore, it has been customary to open the delibera- 
tions of the Conference each year by asking the Divine blessing 
and guidance. Our exercises this afternoon will begin with this 
devotional service, and we shall be led in prayer by the Rev. Calvin 
Stewart, D. D., of this city. 

Dr. Stewart then offered prayer. 

A Member: — Mr. President, I believe it has been customary, 
in the very beginning of the proceedings, to announce the commit- 
tee on organization. I move you, therefore, that the Chair do now 
announce that committee. 

Adopted. 

The President : — The Chair appoints on that committee : Dr. 
Walter H. Page, of New York ; Mr. W. H. Baldwin, Jr., of New 
York; Dr. C. T. Meserve, of North Carolina; Mr. E. G. Murphy, 
of Alabama, and Mr. E. C. Branson, of Georgia. This committee 
will now have leave to retire, and they will be heard the moment 
they return with their report. 

There being no direct business before the Conference — and 
there will not be until this committee have an opportunity for delib- 
eration and report — I will take the liberty of making a few sugges- 
tions to the audience. 

Always, under circumstances like these, when so large a num- 
ber of those who have gathered here for the serious business of 
the Conference, are surrounded with a hospitality so delightful, 
there is a very serious temptation to allow social privileges and_ the 
charms of such hospitality to lead the delegates away from their 
serious duties. I therefore desire to ask that you will not yield to 
social life the attention which this Conference deserves and has a 
right to require. 

I am also requested to suggest, and I would very positively 
urge, that all of the members of the Conference wear their badges. 

The exercises of the Conference in this city will close on Fri- 
day evening. The sessions of the Conference, however, will be 
continued on Saturday at the University of Virginia. A special 
train will convey us there, and announcement as to the management 
of this excursion will be made at the proper time from this desk. It 



Business Session. ii 

is hoped that the attendance at the University of Virginia will be 
large. 

After that, on next Sunday evening, there will be a service 
which should prove to be deeply interesting to all members of the 
Conference, to every one interested in education, and to the citizens 
of Richmond — a memorial occasion having to do with the life and 
public services of the late Hon. J. L. M. Curry, who passed away 
from us only a few weeks ago and whose remains were brought to 
their last resting place in your beautiful cemetery. 

We are now prepared to hear from Dr. Walter H. Page, chair- 
man of the committee on organization. 

Dr. Page: — Mr. President, the committee on organization and 
nominations reports (i) a motion that the present officers of the 
Conference hold over until the end of this Conference, and (2) asks 
leave to make its report on organization and nominations for the 
ensuing year on Friday morning. 

The President: — The committee moves that the new officers 
elected by the Conference on Friday do not enter upon the duties of 
their respective offices until after the close of this Conference. 

Motion seconded and adopted. 

The President: — The report seems to be limited to this one 
little suggestion, — which the mind does not require much higher 
education to formulate. 

At previous Conferences there has been some time occupied 
in a very interesting way by the presentation of invitations from 
communities where it has seemed desirable that the next session of 
the Conference should be held. Therefore we have a suggestion 
from the executive committee that time be given this afternoon for 
the presentation of such invitations. I will only say, in introducing 
this matter, that an hour ago I received this telegram, addressed to 
the president of this organization : 

" The University of Alabama heartily joins Montgomery in the invita- 
tion to the conference. 

" John W. Abercrombie, 

" President University of Alabama." 

If there are any gentlemen on the floor who have suggestions 

of this nature to present, the Conference is now ready to hear them. 

Dr. B. J. Baldwin, President of the Board of Education of 



12 



The Conference for Education. 



Montgomery, Alabama :— Mr. President, I am delighted at the sug- 
gestion just this moment made by the Chair, as it relieves me from 
making a speech. 

Following the telegram of the President of the University of 
Alabama, I wish to present, briefly, a more extended invitation from 
the state of Alabama, and particularly from the city of Montgomery. 
Having met in Georgia, in North Carolina and in Virginia, we feel 
that it would be wise for you to go a little further into the South, 
and therefore we earnestly hope that you will accept our cordial 
invitation to come to Montgomery. 

In this behalf, I wish to present an invitation from the governor 
of Alabama, his Excellency William D. Jelks; an invitation from 
E. B. Joseph, mayor of the city of Montgomery ; an invitation from 
the city council and aldermen of the city of Montgomery; an 
invitation from the Department of Education of the State of Ala- 
bama; an invitation from the Board of Education of the city of 
Montgomery, and an invitation from the Alabama Polytechnic 
Institute. 

The best and only thing we have to offer is a most cordial and 
hearty welcome, and we submit that to your serious and earnest con- 
sideration and hope you will come with us next year. (Applause.) 

Mr. Joseph B. Graham, of Alabama : — Mr. President, my 
speech is not long enough to warrant my walking to the platform. I 
just want to say a word in seconding the invitation just extended. I 
have not been here quite long enough to ask you to go home with 
me, because I haven't had time to get acquainted, but I do so as 
this is the hour for extending invitations. By way of supplementing 
the letters referred to by Dr. Baldwin, I want to say that the legisla- 
ture of Alabama recently undertook to invite you down there next 
year, but you know legislatures will get a little off, and they invited 
you to come this year, but that is pretty correct for a legislature. 
(Laughter.) We will move to extend that invitation forward when 
the legislature reconvenes in September, and you may consider that 
invitation extended ; they really meant for you to come at the time 
when they passed it. 

We feel that we need the influence of this great Conference in 
our section. We are trying to get into accord with its work. We 
want to become part of you in your purposes and your aims. Many 
of you have already traveled in Alabama and visited some of our in- 



Business Session. 13 

stitutions there and know something of our work. We beHeve that 
the presence of this body with us next year would help us, not only 
in Alabama but in that portion of Tennessee which lies immediately 
north of our state, and that portion of Mississippi which is west of 
us; and you would be going along the line suggested by Dr. Bald- 
win—Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and then Alabama. 

We trust that the members of this Conference, without waiting 
for the rounded periods and flowers of speech that usually come 
along with such invitations, may accept the invitation to come 
home with us — but don't come until next year. (Laughter and 
applause.) 

Dr. Alderman, of Louisiana: — Mr. President, I simply desire 
to second the invitation for the selection of Montgomery as the 
place to hold the seventh session of the Conference for Education in 
the South. I think it is clear to all of our minds that, for the pur- 
poses of this Conference, it should be held in the lower South. Of 
course the ideal place would be New Orleans, as the commercial 
metropolis of the South, but in this case. New Orleans is magnani- 
mous and is prepared to give way to Montgomery. I simply wish 
to give to the Conference the expression of my belief that the wisest 
thing we can do is to accept this invitation. 

The President : — The previous method of the Conference has 
been to receive the invitations and refer them to the executive com- 
mittee with power to the committee to decide. Of course all infor- 
mation that can be given on the floor of this Conference has weight 
with the executive committee in making its decision. 

Dr. Hamlin, of Alabama: — Mr. President, I am a Northern 
man by the accident of birth, I am a Southern man from choice ; 
I live in the state of Alabama. Alabama will do all she promises. 
Come to Alabama next year. (Laughter and applause.) 

The President: — If there are no other matters of this sort to 
come before us, this invitation from Montgomery, unless there is 
objection, will take the usual course and be referred to the executive 
committee for consideration. 

There is an opportunity now, and perhaps the only one that 
will occur during the proceedings of the Conference, for the intro- 
duction of any new business that any one may desire to present. 

Mr. George Foster Peabody, of New York: — Mr. President, 
I move that it be referred to the Committee on Resolutions as to 



14 The Conference for Education. 

whether it would not be better to adopt an order of business whereby 
these matters we have just been considering would be deferred to 
a later session of the Conference. It seems to me and it has occurred 
to some others with great force, that it would be better for the first 
session to be a real business session and these matters to be deferred 
to a later time. 

The President: — As the Chair understands the motion, it 
refers to the committee on resolutions the question whether it would 
not be desirable to transfer the formal business from the first session 
to the last, and, if the resolution is adopted by the committee, it will 
change the order of business ; in the next session of the Conference, 
the matters we have been attending to this afternoon would be 
attended to at the last meeting, thus giving us an opportunity for 
the Conference to begin its legitimate and important work imme- 
diately upon gathering together. 

Adopted. 

The President: — I have to state that the programs for the 
entire Conference are here; they will be handed out by the ushers 
at the ends of the aisles as the audience retires. Is there any other 
business to come before the Conference? 

On motion, the Conference then took a recess until 8 o'clock 
p. m. 



FIRST DAY. 



EVENING SESSION. 

Wednesday, April 22, 1903. 

The Conference was called to order at 8.15 o'clock p. m. 

The President: — Before entering upon the formal exercises 
of the evening-, I am glad to state that there is a universal demand, 
voiced by distinguished citizens, that the gentlemen who are partly 
responsible for this organization, the executive committee and the 
members certainly of the General Education Board and the Southern 
Education Board, present themselves on the platform. The people 
desire to see them, their friends of the Conference desire to be 
amused at their expense, and those who are up here desire their 
support. If they are men, and I think they are, they will respond 
to this suggestion. (Laughter.) 

I would say that at the close of the exercises this evening, the 
audience is expected to respond to the invitation to a reception at 
Richmond College. 

Though it is almost a satire that I, a stranger, representing a 
miscellaneous body, scattered in its membership all over the United 
States, should do so, it is now my privilege to present to this audi- 
ence his Excellency the Hon. A. J. Montague, governor of the 
Commonwealth of Virginia. (Applause.) 

Address of Welcome, 
By Governor Montague, of Virginia. 

Mr. President, Members of the Conference, Ladies and Gentlc- 
fHen, It is always difficult to say how heartily we welcome people 
when we really mean to welcome them. It is something that can be 

(15) 



i6 The Conference for Education. 

expressed better in the act than in the word. It lies more in the 
exhibition of the thing than in the speech. But I can assure the 
ladies and gentlemen who are in attendance upon this Conference 
that the people, not only of Richmond, but of the commonwealth, 
are greatly interested and gratified in your coming, and trust that 
your stay may not only be pleasant but also profitable in those higher 
and better things which make for the promotion of humanity. (Ap- 
plause.) 

I should say, however, that we welcome you to something else 
besides our hearts and homes. We welcome you to a hospitality 
of thought and to a common but noble undertaking. You are no 
strangers to us save that perhaps all of us do not know your 
names. We are all American citizens, interested in those things 
that make for the welfare of the American people. This Conference 
comes to this commonwealth, on the borderland of the Southern 
states, not as strangers, as I have just observed, but to see with 
our eyes, to feel with our hearts and to help with our hands. You 
do not come to dogmatize, but to co-operate. You have no hostile 
views to impose upon us, but you come simply to help us and to 
give us the inspiration that springs from common fellowship in 
a good and a great thought. Therefore, one must have a poor and 
selfish heart not to extend to you a cordial and an abiding welcome. 
(Applause.) 

The education of our people is the supreme task of statesman- 
ship, as it is the supreme need of the masses of our people. Political 
despotism carries with it academic despotism. Freedom of the press, 
of politics, of education and of religion are, perhaps, the four car- 
dinal factors in our governmental system. If this be a government 
of the people, by the people and for the people, then that people must 
be an intelligent people. It is idle to speak of sovereign power with- 
out the intelligence necessary for the exercise of that power. There- 
fore, in a government by the people, of the people and for the people, 
it is essential that the people should have capacity for government, 
and to have that capacity they must have an educated intelligence. 
Consequently, it is the bounden duty of the state, it is an inexorable 
burden it cannot escape, that education shall be of the people, by 
the people and for the people. 

Our government rests upon the consent of the governed. Con- 
sent implies not only volition, but an intehigent conception of that 



A. J. Montague. 17 

which is assented to. Therefore, it is the duty of every man who 
has anything Hke a desire for the advancement of his fellow-men, 
anything like an altruistic spirit, to see that the intelligence of the 
people is properly educated. 

Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, I observe that education in its 
broad sense, in its moral sense, in its physical sense, is almost the 
beginning and end of man's life. In a free country, education must 
not be and cannot be confined to any particular class. It must go 
through every beaten path and highway of the common people of 
the land, it must go into every home and by every fireside. Well 
did Mr. Jefferson express that, and well therefore did Mr. Macaulay 
say that no statesman of his day and the day preceding him ever 
had such zeal for education and such faith in its power. This under- 
taking, to which these ladies and gentlemen have committed them- 
selves, is for the common education of the great masses of our 
people. No man can live unto himself, no man can die unto himself. 
We have to bear one another's burdens ; we have to see that those 
who do not have the light shall have that light. 

One other word, ladies and gentlemen. If the American Re- 
public is to be made a success, no state shall have pleasure in the 
disasters of another state. (Applause.) Love of a land is not so 
much love of the flowers and the streams as of the people who 
inhabit that land. (Applause.) Therefore, we welcome you to this 
common task of patriotism, of fellowship, of communion of minds 
set upon high purposes. 

In Virginia if there has ever been a period of our isolatioi 
that period has passed. If there have ever been causes for ou( 
estrangement, those causes no longer exist. This great ;^v.ngresL 
of educators, not educators of the North alone, but educators of 
the North, East, South and West, is spoken of sometimes as being 
composed entirely of gentlemen from the great city of New York. 
The majority of the governing force of this great organization 
is composed of gentlemen from the Southern States. You come, 
ladies and gentlemen, to quicken our spirits, to strengthen our 
purpose, to soften and sweeten our fellowship. What a great end 
for a great country, the greatest country that man's foot ever trod 
upon, and the greatest end that ever yet stirred the heart and blood 
of man! (Applause.) Such a purpose blazes in our eyes. May 



> 



1 8 The Conference for Education. 

the light it carries to each heart be not a faint one, and so may each 
one go away from this meeting better than when he came, and 
feeHng that he has made some contribution to the good of his fellow- 
men. I renew this poor expression of cordial welcome and greeting 
to this superb audience. (Applause.) 



Response of the President, 
Mr. Robert C. Ogden, of New York City. 

Governor Montague, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is no easy task 
that comes to me officially this evening. If I begin in a vain effort 
to respond properly to these words of welcome, I must give to 
this audience some idea of the cumulative invitation that has come 
to this Conference, and to which the Conference has responded. 
To put it in proper official form, I should begin by addressing his 
Excellency the governor, the legislature of the state of Virginia, 
the Department of Education of the state of Virginia, the Univer- 
sity of Virginia, Richmond College, Washington and Lee Uni- 
versity, the Richmond Educational Association, the Richmond 
Chamber of Commerce — for it is at the invitation of all of these 
organizations, social, commercial, political and educational, that the 
Conference has come to this beautiful city for its present session. 
I assure you. Governor Montague and all the representatives of all 
the various organizations whose titles I have recited, that it is with 
very full hearts we come here to respond to your invitation, and 
that our thanks are given to you in a spirit no less sincere than 
your words of welcome to us. (Applause.) 

I wish very much that I had the capacity to make proper reply 
to the welcome and the words of wisdom contained in the Governor's 
address, but that is beyond my power. You will have to " read 
between the lines the grace of half-fulfilled designs." I would do 
better were it in my power. 

It is a very great satisfaction to us of the North and of the 
South, gathered from all the many states represented in the Con- 
ference, to come here as recipients of your gracious hospitality, to 
come and to receive the impulse of all the delightful things you 
are doing for us. But it is even more satisfactory and more delight- 
ful to find in the welcome given to the Conference for Education 



Robert C. Ogden. 19 

in the South a full and complete understanding of all that the Con- 
ference represents and all that it stands for. It only serves to ac- 
centuate what I shall say a few minutes later in my remarks as 
president of the Conference — the fact that the Conference has 
created nothing, but has merely brought together influences that 
have been growing for many years in separated places, whose force 
and power have increased because of their coming together. Hence 
we find here in the city of Richmond, as the Conference has found 
in every place in which it has been privileged to meet, earnest souls, 
rich in and full of all the ideas which inspire the Conference. It is 
this understanding of what the Conference is, and what it stands 
for, that makes perhaps the richest part of our welcome here, to 
which we can respond in the largest and most complete way. 

Through all the history of this Conference, this being the sixth 
of its annual meetings, it has widened in influence, it has deepened 
in sympathetic power, it has broadened in force, each Conference 
making some distinct and large advance on its predecessor. And 
now we come here full of hope and expectancy, believing confidently 
that one long step upwards and forwards will be made during the 
three ensuing days, two days that we are to have here in Richmond 
and one at the University of Virginia. 

If the Conference for Education in the South were an organized 
institution of learning, its presidential office would be a chair of 
apologetics. The changing and widening constituency of each suc- 
cessive gathering, and especially the large local audiences, create 
a natural demand upon the presiding officer for an explanation of 
the Conference, its source, rise and progress, its rationale and organ- 
ization, its right to existence. And in these annually recurring 
conditions of difference must be found the excuse for the con- 
tinuing uniformity of the present chairman's opening addresses. 
Thus limited, it is only possible to add some particulars to a re-state- 
ment of facts and a slight development of themes discussed in former 
years. 

The reports of former Conferences will be consulted in vain 
for definite answers to the questions naturally asked by the large 
contingent now for the first time present. Originally, membership 
was limited to the list of guests invited to share the hospitality of 
Captain Sale, at Capon Springs, West Virginia. The only present 
qualifications needed by a delegate consist in personal presence and 



20 The Conference for Education. 

sympathetic accord. Thus the Conference is a purely voluntary 
association. It has had a healthful and continuous growth without 
a constitution, and has thus proven its ideal nature, human temper 
and intellectual quality. It has illustrated the possibilities of the 
brotherhood of man by electing executive officers and committees 
with no by-laws to restrict, with perfect freedom for unlimited over- 
work, and the right — by appeals to altruism, to patriotism, or fear — 
to impress into the service of the Conference all whose assistance 
may be required. 

By this gentle brigandage the Conference has lived and moved 
and had its being. Cordially appropriating the generous hospitality 
of locality after locality, piling boundless cares upon local commit- 
tees, placing upon its chief officers responsibilities broad as the ten- 
derness of conscience or capacity for initiative ; trusting as the birds 
trust the hand that providentially feeds them, a treasurer without 
an exchequer; appropriating for the use of the executive committee 
the whole American republic of letters that a proper program should 
annually be presented — the Conference has gone forward from grace 
to grace, and strength to strength, until now it convenes in this 
beautiful city of Richmond with a robust intellectual appetite wait- 
ing with faith and hope to be fed and satisfied. Could there be 
a more complete expression of simple faith and abiding trust? 
(Laughter and applause.) 

Quite likely the inorganic character of the Conference has 
inspired the expression of doubt concerning its serious purpose. 
Intimations have not been wanting that it is only a junketing afTair, 
a sort of fad which the imaginations of certain very good people 
have translated into a supposed vitality and force, a solemn fancy 
that affords a sober excuse for an affair primarily social, incidentally 
educational. Suggestions of this nature originate quite beyond the 
circle that have personal knowledge of the facts. Certainly the 
social environment of the successive meetings has been important 
and useful, as it has been delightful, yet it is completely subordinate 
and incidental. 

Nevertheless, the inquiry is legitimate: "What is the theory 
of this Conference ?" The reply is clear and sharply defined : " The 
Conference exists for the advancement and promotion of the educa- 
tion of all the people." A brief analysis of the elements of the 
Conference may clarify this answer. 



Robert C. Ogden. 21 

All are perfectly familiar with the sovereign demands — mate- 
rial, intellectual, spiritual — of educational interests. Executive 
combinations of many sorts — land, buildings, taxation, legislation, 
systems, methods — are under requisition for the service. Its infinite 
details increasingly enlist the unremitting toil of hundreds of thou- 
sands of painstaking teachers, men and women, representing every 
grade of instruction from the simplest to the most abstruse. 

For the moment, in the centre and foreground of this vast per- 
spective, stands this Conference — a composite aggregation of men 
and women, interesting because so varied in its personnel. 

Some are profoundly ignorant of the technicalities of educa- 
tion, quite unfamiliar by personal knowledge with even the recitation 
rooms or the methods of contemporary school life. Others are 
within the sacred fraternity of teachers, and in this group may be 
found representatives of every rank in the teaching profession. 
Still others are charged with the official responsibility of educa- 
tional management on behalf of the state or corporate bodies. But 
all are here with one accord in one place — officials and citizens, pro- 
fessionals and laity — by reason of a common belief in the beneficent 
power of education, and because each distinct element is essential to 
the spirit that must vitalize the Conference. 

So much for the personnel. 

The solvent, the fusing power that creates the common point 
of contact, is the belief, perceived in varying degrees by all here 
present, that the great social duty of our age is the saving of society 
and, further, that the salvation of society begins with the saving 
of the child. (Applause.) Without faith in the moral progress 
of the world we are hopeless indeed. This progress begins with 
the little child, and therefore, in a very literal sense, we are here 
to-day under the leadership of childhood. From the kindergarten 
of to-day to the university of to-morrow is, as the years go by, a 
very short step. 

In this presence no apology is needed for the claims that the 
saving of society, the progressive betterment of humanity, is 
demanded by Divine authority, manifested through the living pur- 
pose clearly revealed in Holy Writ, providential guidance and human 
consciousness. Neither should excuse be asked for insistence that 
a clear, definite and exacting special demand is made upon every 
man and woman for personal service — self-sacrificing, devoted — in 



22 The Conference for Education. 

all things having to do with the creation and promotion of human 
knowledge as a means of human happiness. (Applause.; 

So much for the moral inspiration of the Conference. 

Continuing the inquiry a step further, we notice that, from the 
foundation of our government until now, ringing out with true 
tone and clarion voice, rising resonant and distinct above the clamor 
of politics — above the loud barking of the dogs of war, above the 
harsh controversies concerning the nature of the national federation, 
above the strident debates upon the ethics of domestic institutions — 
the note of democracy, in catholic unison, has ever resounded domi- 
nant and universal. Democracy is a national institution, the funda- 
mental political doctrine of every American worthy of the name, the 
sacred trust confided to our care and keeping, to be preserved for 
the healing of the nations through a complete demonstration of its 
truth upon American soil. Thus, in a very special way, our political 
institutions unfold an inspired mission that deeply concerns the 
moral progress of the world. Thus the state should become the 
universal missionary of a political gospel both at home and abroad. 
(Applause.) 

But a true democracy can only exist through the fidelity of its 
citizens. Individualism — cynical, selfish, cold and indifferent — cries 
out: "Am I my brother's keeper?" "Who is my neighbor?" A 
true democracy quickly echoes back : " Thy brother is he that hath 
need of thee." " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 

There is a divinity in democracy ; in society as in the individual 
there is personal and organic spiritual life. Witness the restless 
longing for social service that marks the serious side of present-day 
life in America. 

So much for the patriotic inspiration of the Conference. 

And thus it has come about that this varied collection of men 
and women, moved by ethical and patriotic incentives, have come 
from remote localities that they may be mutually instructed and 
inspired in a conference based upon the common belief that the gen- 
eral education of all the people is essential to the salvation of society ; 
that without general education, progress in the arts, in the diffusion 
of happiness, in the things that make for the good character, family 
peace, clean living, human brotherhood, civic righteousness and 
national justice is impossible. In the atmosphere of a common 



Robert C. Ogden. 23 

human sympathy the Conference for Education in the South Hves 
and moves and has its being. (Applause.) 

The concrete reply concerning the theory of the Conference is 
short and simple. It is a diminutive spiritual democracy — a sym- 
pathetic association of those who believe in the civic and con- 
structive value of the policy of universal education. It exists for the 
cultivation of the higher inspiration that underlies all social develop- 
ment. It firmly believes that successful practical effort is the product 
of sound ethics. Many here present will attest the accuracy of this 
statement from personal knowledge acquired at former meetings. 

And yet this Conference is not a transcendental body, existing 
in the assumed superiority of a self-created atmosphere of indefinite 
and mysterious supremacy. Therefore, as action is the expression 
of doctrine, as methods are the formulae of beliefs, so the discussion 
of practical educational questions naturally affords the means for 
the cultivation of the true ideal of the Conference. 

The province of pedagogy has rarely been touched, never 
invaded, by the proceedings of the Conference. That great and 
important side of educational progress is too technical and detailed 
for the time at command, and, belonging to the strictly professional 
side of educational administration, could not be profitably considered 
in a body so generally representative as the Conference. It is there- 
fore naturally elirninated. 

There is, however, a vast sphere in which the Conference may 
now, and for long years to come, find ample scope for thought and 
discussion. 

Legislative action has expressed the will of the people upon 
many topics that need larger light, public opinion as yet unexpressed 
in law lengthens the schedule, and individual minds find still other 
questions in education that may well challenge the consideration 
of philanthropists, philosophers and statesmen. These fertile sources 
have supplied the program that your executive committee presents 
for the guidance of your deliberations. 

The absolute need of universal education has the endorsement 
of the law of each of the United States of America and the conscien- 
tious allegiance of all intelligent citizens. 

Local taxation for education has the sanction of law in many 
states. Negro education is recognized as a part of the public edu- 
cational system in every state, both South and North, The education 



24 The Conference for Education. 

of every child in our country is an admitted national duty, and lead- 
ing minds find in this principle broad ground for a demand that 
the national government should share with the several states, in 
pioportion to the need, the financial responsibility involved in the 
discharge of that obligation. The moral accountability of the higher 
institutions of learning to the cause of popular public education, 
and the economic value of education to material progress, are 
great subjects that have the affirmative approval of the highest 
intelligence. 

The admirable program presented to the Conference, requiring 
for its preparation an extraordinary amount of painstaking adjust- 
ment and infinite correspondence, demands no justification or expla- 
nation. It speaks for itself. Nevertheless, interest in the entire 
proceedings will be increased by a recognition of the height, breadth 
and depth of the conditions from which the selection of the topics 
for discussion and instruction has been made. 

Within the limitation of this orderly program this Conference 
is an open forum. Reasoning from previous practice, its function 
is inspiration by discussion rather than decision. Resolutions have 
never been its vogue. Its conclusions have been enshrined in indi- 
vidual thought and not voiced in the vote of a majority. 

This natural practice is a direct evolution from the underlying 
circumstances that made the Conference possible. It is deeply inter- 
esting to note in this connection that the originators of the Con- 
ference did not know the extent of the forces with which they were 
dealing, nor the greatness of the power they were calling into being. 
The one all-controlling fact before the minds of the fathers of the 
Conference was the appalling need of an educational awakening 
in the rural South. Who that heard will ever forget the graphic 
utterances of Dr. Curry and President Wilson, of Washington 
and Lee University, in which, with words hot from well-furnished 
minds and glowing hearts, they reviewed the causes of educational 
backwardness and pictured the then existing need? (Applause.) 
Later came the comprehensive statistical and descriptive addresses 
and papers presented to the Conference by members of the Southern 
Education Board that gave cumulative testimony to prevailing 
conditions and needs. So earnest and drastic were these utter- 
ances that it would seem ungracious to repeat them now. But the 
impassioned expressions of these leaders voiced the longing, anxious 



Robert C. Ogden. 25 

appeal of many earnest and intelligent men and women that, in 
the seclusion of remote, obscure and wide-lying communities, had 
pondered upon the way to improve educational conditions and 
prayed long and earnestly for the means of relief. A vast amount 
of the seed of the Kingdom was growing secretly. These were 
the conditions that awaited the coming of the Conference. At the 
beginning it touched only a few of these faithful souls, but now, 
by its direct action and by other agencies that its spirit has called 
into being, the fellowship is increasing and bringing forth abundant 
fruit. 

The intrusion of disagreement into a domain of thought and 
sentiment so vast and so sacred would seem to be sacrilege. Thus 
the natural life of the Conference has been that of unity and agree- 
ment. The standing ground of common need is so broad, the truly 
vital point so evident and so eminent, as to forbid discussion ; points 
of difference are so minor and inconsequent that perfect accord 
has been natural — any other cofidition would be contradictory to 
the best humanity here in conference assembled. (Applause.) 

I know that I am repeating facts that are more than familiar to 
many here, and partially leading this audience over the same ground 
upon which I have taxed patience before. But it is now for a differ- 
ent end. I wish to demonstrate that the Conference, by apparently 
following a negative course, is doing its noblest best toward securing 
positive results, achieving its greatest resolves without resolutions ; 
by ignoring small details and eliminating lesser and petty influences, 
leaving the larger life of principle and aspiration freedom for growth 
and development. (Applause.) 

If this diagnosis of the theory and practice of the Conference 
meets with assent and approval, let the resolve be made to add 
another year of experience to traditions born of a previous useful 
policy. 

It is fundamentally impossible to hold the Southern Education 
Board and the General Education Board officially responsible for 
this Conference. In a full and complete sense they are only account- 
able to the donors of the money by which they are supported. In 
a very broad and positive sense they are responsible for their action 
to intelligent public opinion. In a sentimental and sympathetic 
sense they are so interesting to the Conference that this discussion 
demands reference to them, and the program would be incomplete 



26 The Conference for Education. 

without some account of their doings. And yet it should be posi- 
tively understood and insisted upon, until the interested public comes 
fully to understand, that the Conference and the boards are abso- 
lutely and entirely distinct. 

The Southern Education Board carries on a crusade for edu- 
cation. Its organization is comprehensive and actively covers the 
larger part of the country from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, 
from the Ohio to the Gulf. Its large expenses are privately defrayed. 
The General Education Board administers such funds as may come 
to it for the assistance of education. In this connection they cannot 
be considered separately — their work is a unit; they are the halves 
of a complete sphere; they are interdependent, subjectively and 
objectively. Seven men are members in both boards. The pro- 
gram indicates the part that reports of their work will occupy in 
the exercises. 

At the office of the General Education Board in New York, 
under the direction of Dr. Buttrick, a vast amount of information 
is being accumulated and tabulated concerning schools and educa- 
tional institutions in the various states covered by the operations 
of the boards. From the Bureau of Information, under the direc- 
tion of Dr. Dabney, at Knoxville, Tennessee, a great mass of popular 
and statistical literature has been circulated to the newspaper press 
and to individuals. Assistance has been extended to various schools 
and institutions, divided nearly equally between the races. Various 
Summer Schools for teachers have been encouraged and assisted, 
none entirely supported. Certain counties in several states have 
been encouraged to improve the public schools by subscription and 
local taxation, by the duplication of funds thus raised by the Gen- 
eral Education Board. These experiments display the possibilities 
6f self-help. State conferences of county superintendents of edu- 
cation have been held, with highly satisfactory results, in Virginia, 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, 
■j- Florida and Louisiana. Others will follow, and probably the useful- 
'j ness of the system will warrant its continuance. 

It is also needful to remember that the Conference is essen- 
tially in control of the Southern delegates, and that such Northern 
official representation as exists has been in obedience to the unani- 
mous demand of the Conference. In harmony with this feature 
of the Conference, all the members of the Campaign Committee, 



Robert C. Ogden. 27 

composed of the several district and bureau directors, of the South- 
ern Education Board, are residents of Southern states. In addition, 
nine other prominent Southern men are representing the boards in 
various forms of activity. Any apparent indeHcacy that may attach 
to this statement must be excused because of some misunderstanding 
concerning the personnel and purposes of the boards. 

Two common grounds of meeting for all humanity are found 
in the fellowship of sin and the fellowship of service. Fellow- 
sinners we all are by our common human nature ; fellow-servants 
of human need we may all be and ought to be through human sym- 
pathy. This great audience is here because of sympathy with the 
object of this Conference. There is no indifference here. It indi- 
cates that the cry of the child is falling upon sympathetic ears ; 
that the fundamental right of every American-born boy and girl 
to a good English education appeals to the sympathetic heart; that 
illfteracy, the great undone margin of national education, claims 
the sympathetic thought of the patriot; that the public conscience 
is being reached by the demand that an heredity of intelligence and 
civic righteousness should be created as the birthright, the patent 
of nobility, of every American. (Applause.) 

We are a proud people. The vast resources, growth of wealth, 
increase of population, achievements of enterprise, tremendous 
material strides forward witnessed by recent years, appeal to the 
imagination with overwhelming force, and we are dazzled by the 
brilliance of the pageant as we are confused by its incomprehensible 
magnitude. I freely admit the blessings of commercialism and 
recognize, with a good, healthful spirit, that trade is the vanguard 
of civilization and the ally of education. 

We are, indeed, a proud people. We boast of our civilization. 
We are vain of our national achievements in science, literature, 
the fine arts, education, philanthropy and social progress. There is 
an aristocracy of intellect and culture, as of money, and, in it all, 
self is the object of highest worship. 

We should be an humble people. Are the wily arts of the dema- 
gogue. North or South, who finds in prejudice, produced by igno- 
rance, the opportunity to serve himself through the triumph of that 
which is false, a subject of pride? Is the prevalence of provincial- 
ism, urban or metropolitan (the latter the greatef), which narrows 
the view to things local and selfish, a subject of pride? Is the 



28 The Conference for Education. 

heredity of ignorance, that transmits its baleful and growing blight 
from generation to generation, a subject of pride? Is the failure 
of law, North or South, to punish crime and the freedom of the 
criminal to prey upon society, a subject of pride? Is the arrogance 
and indifference of wealth to human need a subject of pride? 

When we look fairly at the under side of things, with a good, 
honest purpose to know the truth, does not all our pride melt away, 
and does it not seem that, instead of boasting of our exalted civili- 
zation, we should confess with humiliation that we are just emerging 
from barbarism? 

I am no pessimist. This is not a pessimistic assembly. But 
it does appear as the duty of the moment that we should squarely 
look at our worst conditions. Only thus can we comprehend the 
personal call to service. 

This Conference primarily owes its existence to a great class 
who have heard and obeyed the call to personal service. In the 
beginning it earnestly extended sympathy to teachers of every 
degree, and quickly came back a loyal response. From then until 
now the blessed tie that binds has been strengthened, and the reflex 
atmosphere of appreciation has encouraged the men and women 
from various other walks of life to remain in association with the 
Conference. But without the help of the teachers it would long 
since have expired. 

Encouragement has also come from educational officials. The 
Conference and the boards have been in most delightful harmony 
with the governors of states, superintendents of education of states 
and cities, presidents of universities and colleges and trustees of 
many institutions. Thus the influences have been reciprocal and 
twice blessed. 

The appeal for personal service in this holy cause of popular 
education comes with largely added force from the fact, so pain- 
fully impressed upon all familiar with our Conference life, that we 
meet to-day with ranks sadly broken. The Nestor of this Con- 
ference, Dr. J. L. M. Curry, absent last year on an imponant gov- 
ernment mission to a foreign country, has paid the debt to nature 
and will personally appear no more at our meetings. Another 
opportunity will be given the Conference to pay its tribute of respect 
to his character and public service. But the solemnity with which 
we face the question of the personal call to duty is made intensely 



Robert C. Ogden. 29 

profound by the thought of the inspiring example of our leader. 
The massive and intense personal force of his nature was dedicated 
with uncompromising devotion to the work of universal education. 
The moulding power of his constructive mind will remain per- 
manently impressed upon the educational systems of our Southern 
states as an unceasing betterment. His last public service was 
attendance upon the annual sessions of the Education Boards at 
New York in January. It is gratifying to know that from this 
Conference and its cognate forces he derived much hope and satis- 
faction in his declining years. His courage in January was splendid, 
and he confidently expected a renewal of strength that would warrant 
his resumption of active service. But to the rest of the circle it 
was plain that his hopes would not be realized, and we felt, as did 
the Ephesian elders when parting from St. Paul, full of sorrow 
that we should see his face no more. His example is a call to duty, 
his legacy to us is a bequest of labor for the cause which he and 
we in common love. As the standard has fallen from his hand, 
let us raise and carry it floating skyward until we in turn surrender 
it to other hands. And then may it be ours to leave the same 
impress of a noble task well performed as a benediction to our 
little world and a challenge to the services of others. (Prolonged 
applause.) 

There is also great encouragement in the devotion of many 
earnest souls to the work represented here. A revelation of the 
self-sacrificing service through many channels of effort of the life 
now before me would be a powerful inspiration and incentive. 
Much of it is not distinguished as the world counts distinction, but 
represents devotion fully up to the level of capacity and oppor- 
tunity ; much of it is prominent and carries a recognized leader- 
ship of the sort that the world needs — not the prominence of pride 
and self-seeking, but just that which follows the line of duty 
wherever it may lead. 

It is a source of deep regret to me that I cannot present a full, 
graphic and complete picture of what has been doing in many and 
various fields of educational influence by the various agencies to 
which allusion has already been made. In some quarters there has 
been an impression that the Conference is a distributor of money, 
and people have come from distant points to present claims only 
to meet with disappointment. But, as a matter of fact, the Con- 



30 The Conference for Education. 

ference treasury is merely a vacancy, a figment of the imagination. 
The Southern Education Board is costly because its plans are large, 
but it is a dependent without a dollar of margin over its executive 
expense roll. The General Education Board has had some money 
to use for the moderate encouragement of people and institutions 
to self-help. This partial repetition is made only to emphasize 
the fact that the great objective is the arousing of interest among 
all the people for the education of the children. And splendid 
have been some of the results. In certain states it has been a 
great awakening like an intellectual tidal wave, but, unlike such 
a wave, it will not recede leaving desolation in its track. In many 
states during the last year education has been the successful rival 
of politics in commanding public attention, and the same has been 
true of certain counties and neighborhoods that have taken inde- 
pendent and local action. 

In some places it has been a single earnest person; in others, 
the representatives of the boards, in others, state officials, in others, 
the combination of all these forces operating in different ways 
towards the same end. Despondency comes sometimes when the 
great gulf between need and relief is contemplated, but courage 
rises with a view of things accomplished. Although we are denied 
a dramatic spectacle covering the whole field at once, yet at one 
part of our program the several field directors and a number of the 
field agents will give accounts of their work. I would ask your 
special attention to the portion of the program covering these points. 

And now, ladies and gentlemen of the Conference, I have com- 
pleted my third term of office as your president, and I desire to 
remind you that a third term is an indiscretion. 

I did hope to have it to say that with the report of the com- 
mittee on organization and nomination of officers to-morrow morn- 
ing, a new executive committee and new officers would be elected, 
and that I would have an opportunity to-morrow, in restoring to 
you the office with which you have highly complimented me for 
the past three years, to make certain farewell remarks. But, by 
a parliamentary device which in politics might be called a little 
peculiar, action was taken and a report made this afternoon which 
forbids the very best portion of the remarks which I had intended 
to make. (Laughter and applause.) By the action of the Con- 
ference this afternoon, I am compelled to remain in service until 



Robert C. Ogden. 31 

next Saturday, when names will be presented and the officers elected 
for another year, and the one on whom the mantle of president may 
fall will have an opportunity to say his little say next year, when 
we will meet, I hope, with unbroken ranks and increased enthu- 
siasm. I thank you for your patience. 

A recess was then taken until 10 o'clock a. m., Thursday, April 
23, 1903- 



SECOND DAY. 



MORNING SESSION. 

Thursday, April 23, 1903. 

The Conference was called to order by the President at 10.15 
o'clock a. m. 

The President : — It has been claimed by some utterly irrev- 
erent members of the Conference that, following in the line of 
progressive betterment that marked our proceedings last night, there 
should be twenty minutes grace this morning. The Chair rules 
that motion out of order. I wish to say that a bill will be intro- 
duced into the legislature to-day and railroaded and probably signed 
before night by the governor, for the suppression of social influence 
in Richmond. It is a great charm of Richmond, but I am sure the 
Conference is suffering by reason of that charm and its habits of 
promptness very much demoralized. 

The program this morning mainly consists of reports and sta- 
tistics, which are usually very dull. I was very much charmed by 
the remark of a gentleman who said that the effect of statistics 
upon his mind was to make him feel seven and three-tenths parts a 
murderer. These reports will not come in that dull form, but filled 
with that grace which characterizes the agents' work in the field, 
and will be presented, I hope, in a manner that will deprive any 
of us of that thought of self-condemnation that will put him in the 
murderers' row. 

The first item on our program is a report from the field agent 
of the Southern Education Board of Alabama. He is personally 
known to some of us here, and as the chairman of the committee 
on education in the recent Constitutional Convention of Alabama, 
he is well known at home. I have the honor to present the Hon. 
Joseph B. Graham, Field Agent of the Southern Education Board 
in Alabama. 

(32) 



Joseph B. Graham. 33 

Report from the Field. 
By Hon. Joseph B. Graham, of Alabama. 

Mr. President and Members of the Conference, It is a pleasure 
and an honor to make the first official report of " Field Work" from 
Alabama. As this is a personal report of personal work, you will 
pardon the oft-recurring " I." 

My official connection with the Southern Education Board 
began with June, 1902. In the month of May of last year an 
informal conference of leading educators in Alabama was held in 
Montgomery for the purpose of meeting Dr. Wallace Buttrick, of 
the General Board, and Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, of the South- 
ern Board. The purposes and plans of the two boards were made 
known at that informal conference and most cordially endorsed by 
our teachers. Beginning with June, I made a three-months' cam- 
paign in various sections of the state, attending commencements, 
teachers' institutes, educational rallies and all public gatherings 
where an opportunity might be afforded to talk to the people for 
local support of better schools and better qualified teachers to be 
better paid. 

I will be permitted to state here that I am state's attorney, or 
prosecuting officer, in one of the judicial circuits composed of six 
counties in my state. I am engaged in that work about six months 
each year, and the remaining time is given to the work of the 
Southern Education Board; but I never permit an opportunity to 
speak for educational progress to pass unimproved at any time. 
This recalls that the first day of circuit court in a rural county in 
Alabama is a great day, when citizens from every section of the 
county come up to the county seat, some as jurors, witnesses and 
litigants, some to swap horses and tobacco, but many just to greet 
friends, talk politics and to get and distribute the news in general. 
These first days have been used largely by the office-seekers and 
politicians for getting office and promoting patriotism ( ?). I have 
endeavored to utilize these occasions in talking of good schools, 
sounder morals, and higher and purer aims; and, if I mistake not 
the sentiment of the people, I believe that they appreciate the change. 

I have visited twenty-two counties, and have delivered from 
one to four -addresses in each county within the eleven months of 
my service. My work and speeches have been along the line of 
3 



34 The Conference for Education. 

stimulating the people to self-reliance and to the local support of 
their schools, looking- ultimately to free public schools supported 
by local taxation with the district as the unit. In my opinion every 
dollar, the giving of which is felt and is to some extent a sacrifice 
upon the part of the person making the contribution, whether vol- 
untary or under form of law, consecrated to the cause of public 
education, is worth more to the contributor and to the growth of 
genuine patriotism than a hundred dollars which may come unmerited 
or unappreciated, or from misdirected philanthropy. 

As an instance of the interest of our rural population in our 
educational progress, and of the character of my field work, I 
recall one day in July during the severe drouth which almost 
destroyed the cotton and corn crops of Alabama last year. It was 
in a mountain county about twenty-five miles from a railroad. 
There was an all-day educational rally, with an abundance of sub- 
stantial " dinner on the ground," notwithstanding the blight then 
resting on the burning, thirsty fields. The people came in great 
numbers from the surrounding country. Many walked, some rode 
in good buggies and surreys ; but many families of from three to 
twelve persons came in plain farm wagons with straw-covered beds, 
chairs from the fireside as seats, drawn by a yoke of oxen. Many 
\ of them were clad in home- woven jeans and cotton; most of them 
\ wore shoes, but some, even adults, were barefooted ; but all were 
happy and cheerful and welcomed visiting speakers most cordially. 
The young people made melody in the old four-note Fa-Sol-La 
system, the leader using the old-time tuning-fork to catch the pitch 
or key which he spread around with his own voice to the bass, 
soprano, alto and treble — they had no tenor, and none but a woman 
can sing country treble. Many speeches were made during the 
day along educational lines, and the young and old seemed to be 
inspired to do and hope for better things for the youth of the land. 
I went the same afternoon to another place ten miles distant, where 
a protracted meeting was in progress. They were having morning 
service at ii o'clock and evening service at 7.30. They heard of 
my visit and the evening sermon was delivered at " early candle- 
light," 6.30 o'clock, and everything was in readiness for me at 8 p. m. 
I was cordially received, though a stranger personally, and wel- 
comed to " the stand" by all, except the minister in charge, who was 
just a little shy on a lawyer speaking from his sacred desk, lest a 



Joseph B. Graham. 35 

little politics or something might destroy the good influence of the 
revival then in progress. 

The speeches made by two other visitors and myself had earnest 
attention for more than two hours, and they were so pitched along 
the line of the close relation of home, school and church, and of 
intelligence, morals and religion, that even the hesitating preacher 
declared to his congregation just before the benediction that they 
had just heard the best sermon of the revival. This is one of the 
many experiences which I have had in my work. 

On the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of January we held 
a conference of county superintendents in Montgomery. Of the 
sixty-six superintendents in the state, sixty were in attendance and 
five were providentially detained at home. The Alabama legislature 
was in session, and almost every member was in attendance at 
the two great mass-meetings held in the evenings. Many of the 
prominent educators and citizens of the state, including the very 
best citizenship of the capital city, were also present. Great ad- 
dresses, plain, logical, and eloquent, were delivered by Dr. E. A. 
Alderman and by Virginia's progressive young educational governor. 
There were local speakers also. The practical work of Mr. D. E. 
Cloyd, of the General Education Board, was much appreciated by 
the county superintendents. This conference, for power and wide- 
spread influence among educators, citizens and legislators, was far 
beyond anything in the history of the state, and has brought our 
best citizenship into thorough sympathy with the work of the two 
great Education Boards. 

We are fortunate in having as a citizen of Alabama, Mr. Edgar 
Gardner Murphy, the executive secretary associated with Presi- 
dent Ogden and also a member of the Southern Education Board. 
He is tireless in good works and has done much, by speech and with 
pen, to forward our movement, not only in Alabama but throughout 
the South. 

Do you ask me what of Alabama educationally? 

I answer that, by comparison with our past history, we enter 
the new century well. 

We have a new organic law which guarantees the rights and 
protection of citizenship to all, but restricts the privilege of suffrage 
to only those who contribute either of their intelligence to the good 
of society, or of taxes for the material support of the government. 



36 The Conference for Education. 

Recognizing the power of intelligence as a factor in the creation of 
wealth, more than one-half of the entire income of the state has 
been set aside as a trust fund for the education of the youth of the 
state, and the legislature is instructed to make additional appro- 
priations when the revenues and collections shall justify. 

For the first time in the history of our commonwealth, the 
principle and privilege of local taxation for public school purposes 
are recognized in jthe organic law. It is true that the unit is the 
county and one mill the limit, while the ideal unit is the district 
and the will of the people the limit, still all must agree that ours is 
better than no unit and no rate at all. (Applause.) If I mistake 
not the sentiment of the people in the counties which I have visited, 
they will vote to levy the one mill tax at the first opportunity. 

My future work will be largely in assisting the educational 
forces in several counties in campaigns for the levying of the one 
mill tax. 

The doctrine of local taxation is becoming popular and is going 
to win in Alabama, although our public school system has been in 
existence only about fifty years and has had but small financial 
support until the past fifteen years. Our rural white schools aver- 
aged one hundred and five days and our rural colored schools 
averaged ninety-three days, free terms, during the last scholastic 
year. 

Be it said to the credit of Alabama, that, although her people 
are comparatively poor, though she has in common with other 
Southern states suffered the disasters of war and borne the burdens 
and sacrifices of reconstruction, and though forty-four per cent of 
her population belongs to a race which pays but little more than 
five per cent of the taxes, still our new organic law forbids that 
discrimination inspired by prejudice which would restrict the educa- 
tional privileges and rights of a particular class or race according 
to its contribution in taxes for the support of the government. This 
equality of benefits did not arise from any cringing fear of federal 
amendments, but from a spontaneous philanthropy too generous 
to take advantage of the poor, and a sense of right and humanity 
too proud to stoop to wrong an inferior race. (Applause.) 

In my opinion, the highest and sincerest expression of the prin- 
ciple of fraternity and the most splendid prophecy of the permanence 
and high standard of our future civilization are to be found at one 



Charles W. Dabney. 37 

and the same time in the wiUingness of the people, through honest 
government, to make Hberal contribution for free public schools for 
the education of all the people. (Applause.) 

This ideal condition has not obtained in Alabama, but I 
stand here to pledge the enlightened sentiment and property-holding 
citizenship of my beloved state, as far as in their ability lies, to 
this platform, and only this, for our future in public education. 
(Applause.) 

The President: — ^We have now the pleasure of listening to 
Dr. Charles W. Dabney, president of the University of Tennessee, 
director in the Southern Education Board and head of the Bureau 
of Information and Statistics located at Knoxville, Tennessee. This 
introduction is intended only for people from a distance; all Vir- 
ginians know Dr. Dabney, and an introduction of him to them is 
superfluous. (Applause.) 



Report from the Bureau of Investigation- and Information 
OF THE Southern Education Board. 

By Dr. Charles W. Dabney, of Tennessee. 

In the brief time allowed it will only be possible to outline the 
work of the Bureau of Investigation and Information, describe a 
few of its features and draw some of the lessons from them. The 
platform adopted at the Winston-Salem meeting of this Conference 
in 1901 authorized the Southern Education Board " to conduct a 
bureau of information and advice on legislation and school organiza- 
tion" which should aid in carrying on " a campaign of education for 
free schools for all the people, by supplying literature to the news- 
papers and periodical press, by participation in educational meetings 
and by general correspondence." This Bureau was located at Knox- 
ville, Tenn., and organized with a director, a secretary and editor, 
two assistants and a small corps of clerks. Associated with it are 
experts in different states who collect and prepare information. 

As its name implies the Bureau has two general functions : the 
collection and study of facts and the distribution of information. 
It is at once an educational clearing-house and a publication bureau. 
It aims to ascertain the actual condition of the common schools, 
normal schools, industrial schools and other public schools, and to 



38 The Conference for Education. 

publish such information about them as will help in their improve- 
ment. 

The work of investigation has been extremely difficult. There 
is not, as a matter of fact, a complete system of public schools in 
any Southern state. No state has a thorough system of reporting 
upon the schools, with the result that the official reports are inade- 
quate and lack uniformity. This has made it necessary to go to 
the original sources or, at least, to the offices of the county and city 
superintendents, clerks and treasurers for the information required — 
an extremely difficult and time-consuming task. 

The great problem is, of course, the rural school, and it is to 
the solution of this problem that we have, so far, directed nearly all 
our means and energies. Over eight-tenths of the Southern people 
live in the country. The rural population averages about forty to 
the square mile. The unit of public education is the county, aver- 
aging five hundred square miles and containing from fifteen to 
twenty thousand people; two-thirds white and one-third colored. 
Such a county will have from seventy-five to one hundred schools 
divided between white and colored, and only a few more teachers 
than schools. These schools are supposed to be administered by 
a county superintendent, on a salary of less than $300 a year. The 
best superintendents are public school-teachers, who rarely have 
any assistance whatever or any expense money. It will be seen that 
the unit of organization is too large, the schools are too numerous 
and too small, and the provisions for supervision wholly inadequate. 

The rural schools are supervised or administered by a state 
superintendent or commissioner of education. The state superin- 
tendent receives the smallest salary usually of any state officer and 
his office receives the poorest support of any one of the state offices. 
Under these conditions there can be no real system of schools and 
very little supervision or control. For these reasons, also, little accu- 
rate information is to be obtained from the official reports. 

The census gives us fairly reliable information about white 
and colored school population, enrollments, attendance, etc., but its 
reports are not sufficiently detailed to meet our requirements. The 
reports of county superintendents and other county records have 
been the best source of information, but they vary greatly in the 
methods followed, so that it is impossible to compile or compare them 
or to estimate their true worth. 



Charles W. Dabney. 39 

In spite of these difficulties good progress has been made in 
the investigations. Reports on Tennessee, North Carolina and Loui- 
siana have been published and those on Alabama, South Carolina 
and other states will be ready soon. Only well-ascertained facts and 
well-established general conclusions are used in these reports, which 
are published in small bulletins suitable for use as campaign docu- 
ments in the respective states. 

As an illustration both of what we are doing in this way and 
especially of the condition of the rural schools in one Southern 
state let me give you at this time an outline of the report on 

THE EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS IN TENNESSEE. 

Tennessee covers a territory of 42,050 square miles, has ninety- 
six counties, and, in 1900, had a total population of 2,020,616 or 
forty-eight persons to the square mile ; a little less than one-fourth 
are colored ; over 80 per cent live in the country. The report gives 
the school population white and colored, the number of schools for 
each race, character and value of the schoolhouses, number and 
character of the teachers, enrollment, attendance, length of school 
terms, etc. It gives the history of the public schools in Tennessee, 
and the important facts about the school laws, school funds, methods 
of taxation, organization, administration, supervision, etc. 

A few facts about illiteracy in Tennessee will be in place here. 
There were in Tennessee in 1900 306,870 illiterate persons ten years 
of age and over. Of the native white population ten years old 
and over 14.2 per cent were unable to read and write. Compare 
with I I.I per cent in Virginia, 19.5 per cent in North Carolina, 
13.6 per cent in South Carolina and 11.9 per cent in Georgia. Of 
the 487,380 males of the voting age, 105,851, or 21.7 per cent, cannot 
read their ballots or write their names. Of the native white males 
of voting age 14. i per cent are illiterate, of the colored males 47.5 
per cent. In the four cities in Tennessee having 25,000 inhabitants 
or over, 3 per cent of the white males of voting age and 40 per cent 
of the colored were illiterate. Outside of the cities the white illit- 
eracy was 14.4 per cent and the colored illiteracy was 51.3 per cent 
of the voting population. Twenty-nine counties have over 20 per 
cent of their native white voters illiterate. 

The relation of school funds to population is most instructive. 
The annual allowance for public schools is 46 cents on each one hun- 



40 The Conference for Education. 

dred dollars of taxable property reported and 86 cents per caput of 
total population. Figures for some other states are given for com- 
parison: Missouri, 42 cents and $2.50; Minnesota, 59 cents and 
$3.20; Nebraska, $2.32 and $4.12; Colorado, $1.05 and $5.18; Cali- 
fornia, 58 cents and $4.65 ; New York, 60 cents and $4.60 ; Illinois, 
$2.08 and $3.68. It will be seen that these states pay much more 
for their schools in proportion to their taxable wealth and several 
times more in proportion to their population than does Tennessee. 

The amount expended for schools per caput for children between 
the ages of five and twenty is in Tennessee $2.32, in Kentucky 
$2.32, Texas %Z-^Z, Minnesota $8.63, Michigan $8.90, Ohio $9.94, 
New York $10.91, Colorado, 11. 11, CaHfornia $16.44, Massachu- 
setts $17.79. Massachusetts pays, thus, nearly eight times as much 
for the common school education of each of her children as does 
Tennessee. 

An important factor is the amount of taxable property per 
caput of school children. For each child between the age of five 
and twenty years there is in Tennessee $509 of taxable property, 
in North Carolina $337, in Georgia $516; but in Iowa it is $714, 
in Missouri $1,982, in Michigan $1,996, in New York $2,661. 

The annual appropriations for public schools must correspond 
to the taxable values. In Tennessee for example, the average is, 
as we found, 46 cents on the hundred dollars of taxable property, 
but this amounts to only 86 cents per caput of the total population, 
about the average of the Southern States. In Missouri the total 
annual school levy is only 42 cents on each hundred dollars of tax- 
able property, but this amounts to $2.50 per caput of total popula- 
tion. In the whole State of New York the annual levy for public 
schools is only 60 cents per hundred dollars of taxable property, but 
^--'this makes $4.60 per caput of population. In other words, the people 
f of the South are doing as well by the public schools in proportion to 
their taxable values as the people of other sections. But they might 
do better, and should. Georgia has less than one-third as much 
taxable property per caput of school population as Maryland, and 
the tax rate, therefore, must be three times as large. But this does 
not form a valid reason why any state should not undertake to pro- 
vide for the best education for all its children. Education is an indi- 
vidual, social and civic necessity. Poor states, like poor men, must 
invest their meager savings for the greatest safety of the countrv 



Charles W. Dabney. 41 

and the largest dividends in human development. The Southern 
people are poor, but they are a most heroic race, and when they 
awaken to a sense of their duty, I venture to predict that they will 
do better by their schools, in proportion to their means, than any 
other people in this country. 

Most instructive is the proportion of adult males, or bread- 
winners, to children of school age. Where the proportion is small 
each adult male must pay a larger part not only of school and other 
taxes, but for the support of the children and all the other non- 
producers. In Tennessee, and in the South generally, the proportion 
of adult males to school children is small compared with the North- 
ern and Western states. There are in Tennessee, for example, sixty- "j 
two adult males to every one hundred school children; in North ' 
Carolina 55, in Virginia 63, South Carolina 51, Georgia 59, Texas 66, 
Ohio 91, Michigan 91, New York 102, Massachusetts 108, Cali- 
fornia 129. In other words, the proportion of adult males to children 
of school age is from 50 to 100 per cent larger in the North and 
West than it is in the South. Each adult male in the South has 
nearly two children to support and educate, where they have only 
one or less in the North and West. In this connection must be 
considered also the fact that the South receives very little immigra- 
tion, comparatively, and sends out great numbers of people to the 
Northern and Western states. These are for the most part young 
men and young women representing the mosj valuable portion of 
our population. There are, for example, in the states north and west 
of Tennessee a half million native Tennesseeans — a tremendous loss 
for a state with a population of two million. The mountain counties 
of east Tennessee lose each year from 3 to 4 per cent of their popu- 
lation, equal to their entire annual increase. Some counties have 
steadily decreased in population. 

After giving these facts, the report goes on to make suggestions 
in regard to improvement of the schools, the necessity for local 
taxation, for a larger state fund to be used in supplementing the 
local funds in poor counties, etc. Special attention is paid to the 
matter of consolidating small, weak schools into large ones. One 
county has, for example, sixty white schools in 350 square miles, 
or one school to every 5.7 square miles, with a school population 
of ninety and an attendance of only forty. It is shown that, if these 
schools were consolidated into eighteen, it would give one to every 



42 The Conference for Education. 

twenty square miles with a school population of 331 each. The 
results of consolidation are worked out for all the counties and fully 
illustrated as regards increased funds, teachers, pupils, improvement 
of buildings and equipment and the development of community life. 

THE SOUTH AT LARGE. 

Finally, let me quote from another paper a few general state- 
ments about the general educational condition of the Southern 
people : 

In 1900 the states south of the Potomac and east of the Missis- 
sippi contained, in round numbers, 16,400,000 people, 10,400,000 of 
them white and 6,000,000 black. In these states there are 3,981,000 
white and 2,420,000 black children of school age (five to twenty 
years), a total of 6,401,000. The important question is, what are 
we doing for these children? Let us see. In 1900 only 60 per cent 
of them were enrolled in the schools. Nearly two and one-half 
million children are not even enrolled. The average daily attendance 
was only 70 per cent of those enrolled, and only 42 per cent are actu- 
ally at school. One-half of the negroes get no schooling whatever; 
one white child in five is left to grow up wholly illiterate. Counting 
200 days as a school year, the average citizen of North Carolina gets 
only 2.6 years of schooling in his entire life, both public and private ; 
of South Carolina 2.5 years, of Alabama 2.4 years. In the whole 
South the average citizen gets only three years of schooling of all 
kinds in his entire life. 

In the Southern states, in schoolhouses costing an average of 
%2y6 each, under teachers receiving the average salary of $25 a 
month, we are giving the children in actual attendance 5 cents' worth 
of education a day for eighty-seven days only in the year. This is 
the way we are educating these citizens of the republic, the voters 
who will have to determine the destinies, not only of this people, 
but of the millions of others beyond the seas. 

Now behold the result of these conditions in the adults ! Fig- 
ures for illiteracy are a poor index of the conditions of the people 
as regards education, but they signify much. 

More than one-half of the negroes ten years old and over are, 
as we found, wholly illiterate. Of the native white population ten 
years old and over there are illiterate, in North Carolina 19.5 per 
cent, in South Carolina 13.6 per cent, in Georgia 11.9 per cent, in 



Charles W. Dabney. 43 

Alabama 14.8 per cent, in Kentucky 12.8 per cent and in Mississippi 
8 per cent. All of the conditions are better in. Mississippi than in 
any other of the Gulf States, a result traceable directly to its im- 
proved system of schools inaugurated some twelve years ago. Com- 
pare these figures with those for the white population in Missouri, 
where the percentage of illiteracy is 4.8 per cent; in Indiana it is 3.6 
per cent, in Illinois 2.1 per cent, in Michigan 1.7 per cent, in Wis- 
consin 1.3 per cent, in Iowa and New York 1.2 per cent, in Nebraska, 
Minnesota, Connecticut and Massachusetts .8 per cent, and in South 
Dakota and Washington, settled chiefly with the native white popu- 
lation from the East, .6 per cent and .5 per cent respectively. More 
ominous still are the million and a half white males in the Southern 
states, twenty-one years of age and over, who can neither read nor 
write. 

No general statement, however, can give any idea of the diffi- 
culties in the way of development of good public schools in the 
rural districts of the South. Some of these difficulties are th^ 
sparsity of the population, the physical features of the country, and\ 
the isolation of the people ; but the chief difficulty is the presence \ 
in the South of two races, one of them almost wholly dependent! 
upon the other, but impossible of educational assimilation, making' 
a double system of schools necessary. The average county in the' 
rural districts of the South has eighteen children of school age to the 
square mile, eleven white and seven colored, thus practically making 
two counties, both having a very sparse school population. Where 
the number of negro children is very small, the cost of their proper 
schooling will be proportionately large ; and the same is true of the 
white children. The Southern people are struggling bravely with 
this terrible problem. Out of their poverty they have raised in thirty 
years $110,000,000 for negro education, which is more than five dol- 
lars to every one contributed by the North and West ; and they will 
continue to give a large part of their school funds for this purpose. 
Some states already require that the school fund shall be equitably 
divided between the races in proportion to the number of children, 
regardless of the fact that one race contributes a very small pro- 
portion to it. 

The great trouble in the way of educational progress in the 
South is the absence of efficient social organization. The rural 
population of the South remains, in fact, almost wholly unorganized. 



44 The Conference for Education. 

Before the Civil War, the people of the rural districts were organ- 
ized by plantations. Each great estate was a community to itself, 
with its own farm, factories, villages, and usually its own school 
and church. These things were entirely swept away by the war and 
nothing has yet been formed to take the place of the old plantation 
system. So it is that rural society still remains to be organized 
throughout nearly the whole Southern country. 

The preachers have done much to instruct the people, but have 
divided them into so many sects that efficient social organization is 
now rarely formed around the church, as it was frequently in the 
old days. The great question then is, how shall we organize the 
rural population of the South for the conduct of all its local affairs, 
but especially for the maintenance of good schools? Around what 
center shall this society be formed? Our belief is that it will be 
formed around the consolidated, public industrial school. This would 
bring me to speak of another piece of work which the Bureau is 
undertaking, namely, the organization of one such consolidated 
school in Knox county, Tennessee ; but of this Professor Claxton, of 
the University of Tennessee, will speak to you at another time, so I 
will pass it over, only saying now that the object is to build up a 
central rural school with a small experimental farm, shops, library, 
gymnasium, lyceum, etc., which shall be both a model public school 
and the center of community life and of neighborhood work. 

Such, then, is the Southern educational problem. It is the 
problem of the education of two races widely scattered through an 
undeveloped country. It is the problem of training the unprivileged 
white people of the rural districts of the South for that noble citi- 
zenship which they have never failed to develop when they have 
had the opportunity. It is also the problem of training the black 
man to be a self-supporting and self-respecting member of society. 
This is the great Southern problem to-day. But it is more than a 
Southern problem; it is a national problem. The education of all 
the people of this country is the concern of the people of the whole 
nation. Without giving them any preparation whatever, we liber- 
ated the helpless slaves, less than three hundred years removed from 
barbarism, and endowed them with all the privileges of American 
citizenship. Their training was made the duty of their impover- 
ished white masters, already charged, as we see, with the responsi- 
bility of educating their own race. Both these peoples should have 



Charles W. Dabney. 45 

the sympathy and help of the whole nation. Every commercial, 
political, educational and religious reason should move us to help 
them. We cannot afford to let a great section of the country, con- 
taining one-sixth of our entire population, remain longer in this 
condition. This is the question which I would lay upon your hearts 
and consciences to-day. The education of the people of the South 
is to-day the supreme national question. 

Other lines of Bureau work can only be mentioned. It is the 
duty of the Bureau, among other things, to promote the campaign 
through publications and through matter supplied to the periodical^ 
press, especially to the country newspapers. The slips sent to 1,700 
newspapers in the South are extensively used. In four weeks some 
800 different items or articles were used by 300 papers. The larger 
papers are supplied with syndicate letters and special articles ; and, 
as opportunity offers, their editors are visited for the purpose of 
explaining our work to them. 

The Bureau publishes a campaign paper entitled Southern 
Education, which now has 2,086 paid subscribers and is sent to some 
3,000 to 8,000 other workers in the Southern states and many friends 
in the North and West. The Bureau also carries on an extended 
correspondence with school oflficials, superintendents, school boards, 
directors, etc., with regard to local taxation, consolidation of schools, 
grading rural schools, teachers and school libraries and almost every 
conceivable phase of school work. Letters on these subjects in the 
past year have numbered several thousand. This is an unobtrusive 
but most effective method of doing good. 

In conclusion let me mention a few things which seem most 
needed in our work. 

I. Men and money to do more missionary work among the 
poorer and more isolated populations. The people in one-half of 
the counties of the South are probably not able to support any kind 
of a decent school, even if they knew how to do so. They must first 
be taught the farm and household arts, how to cultivate the soil 
properly, how to utilize their forest and other resources and so to 
make money with which to maintain their schools. There is an 
enormous territory, covering the whole of the great Appalachian 
region, reaching down from Virginia to Alabama, populated with a 
healthy, vigorous and intelligent race, our brothers, or " our contem- 
porary ancestors," as President Frost has aptly called them, which 



46 The Conference for Education. 

this board has scarcely touched. The people of the better counties 
east and west of the mountains have all they can do for a generation 
or more to develop their own schools. The burning question is, 
shall we permit another generation of these mountain boys and girls 
to grow up in ignorance ? In the mountain counties of Virginia, 
West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama there 
are already out of 1,000,000 white males twenty-one years of age 
nearly 200,000 who cannot read and write. Probably we cannot do 
much for the people of this generation, but because we must let them 
pass away shall we let another generation grow up in poverty and 
ignorance? These are our brethren, citizens of these states and of 
the great republic. The appeal is therefore to the whole nation. 
Can we afford to permit so large a portion of our fellow-citizens to 
live longer without schools? 

2. A few model consolidated industrial schools scattered over 
the South. Our people do not know what a good country school is ; 
they have no ideals toward which to work. If there were even three 
or four such schools in each state, properly located, where superin- 
tendents and directors could visit them, they would, we believe, 
multiply themselves very rapidly. 

3. Teachers for the schools. We have almost no professional 
teachers in the country schools. We must have normal schools for 
elementary teachers; several of them in each state to train the 
country boys and girls to be teachers in the rural schools. 

4. Superintendents, men competent to direct educational work, 
to organize and administer schools — educational engineers of all 
grades and classes — are greatly needed as well as principals of 
schools and supervisors of technical and industrial education, manual 
training, domestic science and art and the other newer branches. 
The great need of the South after all is a great teachers' college 
which shall educate and train the men and women who are to be 
the leaders and directors in the Southern schools of the future — that 
complete system of schools for all the people which we are praying 
and working for and which is going to be the chief work of this 
generation of Southern people. 

We recognize the present wretched condition of our schools 
and we appreciate the great difficulties resulting from our poverty 
and sparse population. But let us recognize also the advantages of 
having a field clear of the rubbish of false systems and filled with 



Hollis Burke Frissell. 47 

a race of men who have never yet failed to build great and glorious 
institutions when they got ready to the task ! Let us take courage 
from the great awakening and look forward hopefully to the time 
which is surely coming when the South shall have such a system of 
schools that our Northern friends will have to come down South to 
learn how to organize the modern school, and when we shall be 
making peaceful invasions into the North and helping them hold 
conferences of education for the improvement of their schools. 
(Applause.) 

The President : — The next item on our program is an account 
of the work in Virginia, which will be presented by Dr. Frissell, 
principal of the Hampton Institute and director in the Southern 
Education Board. 

Report from the Field. 

By Dr. H. B. Frissell, of Virginia. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Southern Educa- 
tional Conference is sometimes spoken of as though it were a North- 
ern institution. It is well for us to remember that it is by birth a 
Virginian, and that those of us from the North who met at the first 
Conference came as the guests of a Virginia gentleman who believed 
in the value of co-operation between Northern and Southern men 
interested in the great cause of universal education. It is well for 
us, too, to remember that the principles which the Southern Educa- 
tion Board has adopted for its own are those of Virginia's most 
distinguished educator, Thomas Jefferson. (Applause.) His face 
looks out upon us from the publications of this board, and to the 
promulgation of his principles it is devoting its energies. (Ap- 
plause.) Nowhere can we find a clearer or more emphatic statement 
of the need of universal education than in the writings of this distin- 
guished son of the Old Dominion. The bills which he proposed to 
the Virginia Assembly in 1779 are so expressive of our own ideas 
that we might safely adopt their important clauses as the principles 
of our educational propaganda. (Applause.) 

The first bill, known as the "Act for the More General Diffu- 
sion of Knowledge," provided elementary schools for the children 
of rich and poor alike, and secondary schools for a limited number 
of the most worthy youth of the state. The second bill provided for 
a state university, and the third for a public library. Though the 



48 The Conference for Education. 

Virginians of that time were not prepared to accept Mr. Jefferson's 
far-reaching plans, he continued to advocate them, and, in these 
striking words, gave expression to his vital interest in universal 
education : " A system of general instruction which shall reach every 
description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest, as it was 
the earliest, so it will be the latest of all public concerns in which 
I shall permit myself to take an interest." From the time of Jeffer- 
son to the final realization of his plans in 1870, under the wise lead- 
ership of the Honorable W. H. Ruffner, Virginia's leading men have 
expressed their conviction that a system of free schools is necessary 
to the well-being of a democracy. (Applause.) 

St. George Tucker, an able champion of democracy and uni- 
versal education, believed not only in Jefferson's ideas on education 
but in his scheme for freeing and educating the slaves. In his 
" Notes on Blackstone," published in 1803, Judge Tucker gives the 
outlines of his own plan for the gradual liberation and education 
of the negroes, and adds a resume of Jefferson's " Bill for the More 
General Diffusion of Knowledge in Virginia." In 1841, Henry 
Ruffner, president of Washington College, now Washington and 
Lee, proposed a very practical plan for the organization and support 
of common schools in Virginia. In 1856, Henry A. Wise, who after- 
wards became one of the ablest governors of the commonwealth, 
addressed his constituents of the Accomac Congressional District in 
these forceful words : " If I had an archangel's trumpet, the blast 
of which could startle the living of all the world, I would snatch it 
at this moment and sound it in the ears of all the people of the 
states which have a solitary, poor, unwashed and uncultured child, 
untaught at a free school. Tax yourselves : first, to pay the public 
debt; second, to educate your children — every child of them — at 
common, primary, free schools at state charge." (Applause.) 

The first free school in Virginia, which was also the first in 
America, was the one established near Hampton by Benjamin Syms 
in 1634. This school has done good work from the day of its foun- 
dation, and to-day, under the name of the Syms-Eaton Academy, 
is a well-equipped and effective institution of learning. But it was 
not until 1870 that the constitution of Virginia provided for a gen- 
eral system of public schools. Dr. William Henry Ruffner, son of 
President Ruffner, was called to the new office of state superintend- 
ent of public instruction. In a brief space of time he formulated 



Mollis Burke Frissell. 49 

a system of free schools that has been most satisfactory — a system 
that was planned by Thomas Jefferson, advocated by St. George 
Tucker and other leading Virginians, elaborated by President Ruff- 
ner, and finally established under the direction of William Henry 
Ruffner, of whom it has been said that " in the remarkable list of 
Virginia's great and honored citizens, no one has done more for her 
enrichment in all that is noble." (Applause.) 

But the burden thrown upon the white citizens of the state by 
the necessity of providing school advantages, not only for their own 
children but for those of the negro race as well, was a heavy one. 
Nor was the negro problem originally one of Virginia's seeking. It 
would be interesting, were there time, to show the heroic endeavors 
made by prominent Virginians to abolish slavery. When, therefore, 
after the war, the state faced the necessity of educating all of its 
children, black as well as white, it is not strange that many felt, as 
Dr. Ruffner says, " exasperated" that the Congress of the United 
States should fail to grant aid in the heavy task of educating the 
children of the freedmen. " But," said Dr. Ruffner, " the failure in 
us to educate them would be far worse than all the burdens we have 
to bear, and help will come sooner or later." (Applause.) 

And help did come, not from the Congress of the United States, 
be it said to its shame, and not for the freedmen alone. Through 
the generosity of Mr. George Peabody, a gift of $3,500,000 was, 
made " for the promotion of education in those portions of our 
common country which had suffered most from the destructive rav- 
ages and the not less disastrous consequences of the Civil War." 
Hon. J. L. M. Curry, of honored memory, the agent of that fund, 
who has perhaps done more for the establishment of public schools 
in the South than any other one man in this country, in his last 
report to the trustees speaks of its beneficent results as marvelous, 
partaking of the nature of revolution. (Applause.) Speaking 
further of the work of the Peabody Fund, he says : " There sprang 
up through the South, under this stimulating and guiding influence, 
excellent schools, most of which continue until the present day, and 
are incorporated with state systems." Later came the Slater Fund, 
which Dr. Curry also administered most wisely. 

It was not strange that Dr. Curry, understanding as did no 
other man. South or North, what these two funds had accomplished, 
should have greeted with enthusiasm any organization that had for 
' 4 



^o The Conference for Education. 

its object the securing of free schools for all the people. Dr. Curry 
did not meet with us the first year at Capon Springs, but the second 
year he presided and ever after was one of the guiding spirits of 
the Conference. His ringing words on that occasion will never be 
forgotten by those who heard them. Speaking of the condition of 
the South after the war, he said : " Despite the environments and 
the hopelessness of the outlook, there were a few who felt that the 
salvation of the South, the recovery of its lost prestige, depended 
on universal education. They felt that no better service could be 
rendered to the country and the great problem which embarrassed 
or darkened action than a scheme of applying systems, tried and 
known elsewhere, to the renaissance of the South. Therefore, with 
hope and courage amid the gloom of disappointment and poverty and 
despair, the pressure of adverse circumstances, and the struggle for 
subsistence, they advocated and secured the incorporation into 
organic law of general education as the only measure which prom- 
ised to lift up the lately servile race and restore the white people 
to their former prosperity. They persevered in their efforts until 
now every state in the South has state-established, state-controlled, 
state-supported schools for both races, without legal discrimination 
as to benefits conferred." (Applause.) Dr. Curry's eloquence 
roused the enthusiasm of that little company of earnest men and 
women. It was at this session that a resolution was passed grate- 
fully endorsing the wise and helpful administration of the Slater 
and Peabody Funds, and urging the appointment of a committee, 
acting in harmony or in conjunction with the management of these 
funds, to assist in the wise distribution of contributions for educa- 
tion. 

It will be seen, therefore, that the first movement towards the 
formation of a board came as the result of Dr. Curry's eloquence 
and with the thought of assisting this trusted representative of 
Virginia and the South in the carrying out of plans already cor- 
dially approved by every Southern legislature, and the tremendous 
value of which to the South had been proved beyond a doubt. The 
session of the following year, the third and last on Virginia soil 
previous to our gathering here, was stirred to its depths by the story 
told by Captain Vawter, the friend and fellow-soldier of Jackson 
and Lee, of what we had been able to accomplish for the white 
boys of Albemarle County by giving them industrial training in the 



Hollis Burke Frissell. 51 

Miller School. He showed how five hundred boys, through the aid 
of this sort of education, had been able to earn annually from 
$225,000 to $300,000 more than in all probability they would other- 
wise have received, while they had at the same time been enabled to 
render invaluable services to the communities in which they lived. 
His eloquent speech closed with these words : " God grant that the 
inspiration of this day may be for the uplifting of both races in our 
Southland along the line of what is most needed — systematic, intel- 
ligent, industrial training." (Applause.) This session was memor- 
able, too, as being the last at which the Conference listened to the 
words of wisdom of that noble statesman and educator, Hon. Wil- 
liam L. Wilson. While he strongly opposed an appeal to Congress 
for help for Southern education, he cordially approved the plans of 
the Conference for the improvement of the schools. It was largely 
through the admiration which President Wilson inspired in the 
members of the Conference that the raising of the William L. Wilson 
Memorial Fund for Washington and Lee University was made pos- 
sible after his death. 

It is not necessary that I follow this Conference in its migra- 
tions to North Carolina and Georgia, nor that I speak of the forma- 
tion of the present board, whose personnel is thoroughly known to 
you. The campaign committee, to which was entrusted the work 
in the field, was placed under the direction of Dr. Curry. He imme- 
diately hastened to Richmond, conferred with Governor Montague, 
and sought advice from the state superintendent of public instruc- 
tion and other leading citizens. The Constitutional Convention then 
sitting in Richmond afforded a rare opportunity for influencing 
public sentiment and securing the enactment of new school laws. 
It seemed wise to appoint as field agents two men well known in 
Virginia and thoroughly conversant with educational conditions in 
the state. One of those selected was Hon. H. St. George Tucker, a 
lineal descendant of the great jurist who had so ably advocated the 
cause of free schools in 1803, dean of the law school of Washington 
and Lee University, an eloquent speaker and former member of 
Congress from Virginia; the other was Dr. Rotj^rt Frazer, a per- 
sonal friend of Dr. Curry, a man of broad culture, connected for 
many years with a training school for teachers in Mississippi and 
later with the Farmville Normal School in Virginia. These gen- 
tlemen at once put themselves in touch with many of the members 



52 The Conference for Education. 

of the Constitutional Convention, with the State Board of Educa- 
tion and with superintendents and teachers throughout the state. 
While they would not claim the credit for all the wholesome changes 
in the new constitution affecting educational matters, there is no 
doubt that some of these are due to their influence. (Applause.) 
Among the essentials for good schools are local taxation, trained 
teachers and expert supervision. For all these the new constitution 
makes ample provision ; and the State Board of Education and the 
General Assembly have been giving patient and thorough study to 
the revision of our school laws. (Applause.) 

But the field agents have not addressed themselves alone to the 
work of influencing the legislature and the Constitutional Conven- 
tion. Their most important work has been done in the country dis- 
tricts, where they have spoken at the courthouses on educational 
subjects and have had as large crowds of listeners as on political 
occasions. They have also brought the subject of education before 
the people at religious gatherings, notably at the Baptist District 
Associations, where have been gathered representatives from sixty 
counties and nine cities. On such occasions most cordial good will 
has been shown to the agents of the Southern Education Board 
and a lively interest exhibited in the cause which they have repre- 
sented. On several occasions, when their educational meetings have 
been held in towns, the stores have been closed and the courts 
suspended. The audiences have been large and enthusiastic, some 
persons riding over twenty-five miles to attend the meetings. 
(Applause.) In one instance 90 per cent of the county teachers 
were present. Women have shown much interest in the movement, 
often decorating the courthouse with flowers, and inquiring how they 
could help in the improvement of schoolhouses and yards. Much 
assistance has also been given by the religious and secular press. 
Teachers' associations and institutes have been visited and helped, 
and in various ways nearly every section of the state has been 
reached. 

Dr. Tucker and Dr. Frazer have everywhere attempted to dis- 
cover the real ne^s of a community, and then to arouse the people 
to meet those needs. Of the 1,900,000 people in the State of Vir- 
ginia, about nine-tenths live in the country. Virginia's educational 
problem, then, is how to improve conditions in rural communities. 
It has been estimated that there are over 6,000 white schools in the 



Hollis Burke Frissell. 53 

state exclusive of those in the cities, and that 2,000 properly placed 
would bring a school within two and a half miles of every home. 
The subject of consolidation has been widely discussed and much 
good work has already been accomplished by energetic superintend- 
ents, of whom Virginia has not a few. Mr. Joynes, of Accomac 
County, has closed eleven white schools and one colored one during 
the past year. In Washington County there are eight cases of 
consolidation and the term has been lengthened from five to eight 
months. (Applause.) Mr. Hulvey, of Rockingham, from whom 
we shall hear this afternoon, has done good work in the matter of 
consolidation, as have also the superintendents of Bedford, Henry 
and other counties. The agents of the board have visited nineteen 
communities which are interested in the strengthening of their 
schools through consolidation. At the Superintendents' Conference 
in January, many instances were given of this method of improving 
the schools and the sentiment was strongly in favor of it. 

More than ever before the people are showing themselves ready 
for higher local taxation. In a number of counties an increased 
levy has already been made, reaching, in some cases, the maximum 
limit allowed by the constitution, fifty cents on a hundred dollars' 
worth of property. Some communities are also making praiseworthy 
sacrifices in the way of private subscriptions for the improvement 
of their schools. For example, at Martinsville, in Henry County, 
plans are matured for raising $12,000 for a modern school building 
and a yearly income of $4,000 for maintenance. There has been 
a decided lengthening of the session, the state average now reaching 
6.1 months. In one county the schools are open nine months, in 
another eight and two-thirds and in several others over seven 
months. In Washington County great improvement is being made 
in the schoolhouses, seven buildings of modern design having been 
lately constructed and seven others being in process of erection. 
(Applause.) They contain three or four rooms each, with vesti- 
bules and cloak-rooms, and cost from $750 to $1,200 each. The 
superintendent of this county devotes all his time to the schools, 
with results of sufficient importance to commend this plan to the 
State Board of Education as one worthy of being universally 
adopted. (Applause.) In the rural schools of this same county 
there was not last year a single male teacher of college training; 
now there are seven men and fifteen women who have had such 



54 The Conference for Education. 

training. One county, Prince William, has introduced manual 
training into eight or ten of its schools. 

Dr. Frazer reports that, in his opinion, a decided change has 
taken place in the attitude of the whites towards negro education. 
He says that he never hears a word against it now, but, on the 
contrary, strong terms of advocacy, often from unexpected sources. 
In one county that he visited he found the per capita expenditure in 
white schools eighty cents and in the negro schools one dollar and ten 
cents. This, however, he says, does not come from any special lean- 
ing towards the negro, but is due to the relative sparseness of the 
black population and the unwillingness of the school authorities that 
their educational interests should suffer on that account. (Ap- 
plause.) Dr. Frazer adds that this shows that the white people of 
Virginia are beginning to see that the welfare of the commonwealth 
depends upon education for all. He has visited a number of negro 
schools and thinks the outlook for that portion of our population is 
constantly growing brighter. The superintendents at their confer- 
ence in January voted unanimously for eight grades with manual 
training in negro schools, and several spoke strongly in favor of 
giving them secondary schools. (Applause.) 

The Southern Education Board has employed Mr. Taylor B. 
Williams, a native of Virginia and a graduate of Hampton and of 
Harvard University, who has had much experience in graded schools 
in Indiana, as field agent among the colored people. Mr. Williams 
has done work similar to that of the other field agents, but has 
made a special study of the conditions and needs of the colored 
schools. 

Dr. Frazer mentions briefly a few needs of Virginia schools. 
He says : 

" First, Virginia greatly needs trained teachers and more normal 
schools, especially for women. 

" Second, I should rejoice to see three or four modern, well- 
equipped and well-manned schools established at conspicuous rural 
centres to let the people see what a real school is. A single model 
school, well placed, with a good equipment of modem appliances, 
with library and laboratories, with provision for manual training 
and nature study, and with well-trained teachers, would be the most 
fruitful object lesson that could be given to our people. 

" Third, I should like to see in each county a competent super- 



Hollis Burke Frissell. 55 

intendent giving all his time to the direction of his schools and 
receiving a salary commensurate with his work. The new consti- 
tutional provision for redistricting the state with a view to more 
efficient supervision of schools is a step in the right direction." 

No report of the Southern Education Board would be complete 
without an acknowledgment of the cordial co-operation which its 
agents have received from the Hon. Joseph W. Southall, super- 
intendent of public instruction for Virginia, and the gentlemen 
associated with him on the State Board of Education. The objects 
which the Southern Education Board has in mind are those to 
which Dr. Southall has called attention in his admirable report for 
1901, where he reviews the progress of the public school system 
during the past thirty years. In spite of the difficulties which it has 
had to encounter, there has been steady advance. While the white 
school population has increased from 247,000 in 1871 to 426,000 
in 1 90 1 and the colored from 164,000 to 265,000, the number of 
white pupils enrolled has increased from 92,000 to 258,000 and the 
number of colored pupils from 38,500 to 123,000. The average 
daily attendance has grown from 52,000 to 156,500 in the case of 
the whites and from 23,000 to 69,500 in the case of the colored. 
That is to say, while the school population has not quite doubled, 
the average daily attendance has more than trebled. In other words, 
Virginia is not one of the states in which the illiteracy is growing 
more rapidly than the population. 

Speaking of what he calls " the wild and insane tendency to 
multiply small district schools," Dr. Southall says : " We have thus 
been dissipating our educational energies and resources instead of 
consolidating and concentrating them for the great struggle against 
illiteracy and crime." 

Twice during the past year the state superintendent has called 
the county and city superintendents together to discuss measures 
for the improvement of the public schools — once in the summer 
during the session of the School of Methods at Charlottesville, and 
again in the winter at Richmond to meet Dr. Buttrick, the secretary 
of the General Education Board. It is doubtful if two more impor- 
tant meetings have ever been held in Virginia. Certainly no one 
who listened to the story of the struggles of these earnest men, 
who, in the face of tremendous difficulties, are trying to bring proper 



56 The Conference for Education. 

educational advantages to the children of Virginia, could fail to be 
full of hope for the future of the commonwealth. 

One of the most helpful agencies for the creation of a public 
sentiment more favorable to free schools has been the state press. 
Almost without exception, the religious and secular papers have 
opened their columns to educational news and have published valu- 
able editorials bearing upon the needs of the schools. Especial 
reference should be made to the Richmond Times-Despatch, which 
has not allowed a week to pass during the last two years without 
giving time and thought to this important subject. 

The Richmond Educational Association, composed largely of 
intelligent and public-spirited women, has made itself a power for 
good throughout the state. A number of important meetings have 
been held under its auspices, and it is largely through its earnest 
efforts that this Conference has been brought to this beautiful capital 
city and so royally entertained. Without the cordial support of 
his Excellency, Hon. A. J. Montague, the educational progress 
of the year would have been impossible. He is rightly called the 
educational governor, for, in every possible way, by word and 
deed, he has made himself felt in the struggle for better schools, 
(Applause.) 

It is a cause for thankfulness that Captain Vawter, whose 
remarkable work in connection with the Miller School has already 
been mentioned, has been induced to accept the presidency of the 
board of trustees of the Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute 
for Colored Youth, at Petersburg. His sound common sense and 
large experience will be of untold value to this most excellent insti- 
tution. (Applause.) 

No need is more pressing in Virginia than that of more adequate 
training of teachers for the public schools of the state. It is a cause 
for regret that larger appropriations have not been made by the 
legislature for William and Mary College and the Farmville Normal 
School. Mrs. C. P. Huntington and Mr. Archer M. Huntington 
have offered to give $30,000 for the erection of a manual-training 
high and normal school for whites and a manual-training high school 
for blacks at Newport News, provided a similar sum is raised for 
this object elsewhere. (Applause.) The Board of Education has 
approved this plan, and there is reason to believe that the money 
will be raised and the building erected. 



Edwin A. Alderman. 57 

The President : — I have the pleasure now to introduce to you 
Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, president of the Tulane University, of 
New Orleans, and a director in the Southern Education Board. 

Report from the Field. 
By Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, of Louisiana. 

Mr. President and Members of the Sixth Conference for Edu- 
cation in the South, I desire to report briefly to this Conference 
to-day the work attempted, the results thus far accomplished, and 
the plans in mind in the southwestern field since the last session of 
this Conference in April, 1902. It should be clearly understood that 
our great purpose is to arouse an irresistible public opinion for the 
estabHshment and maintenance of a system of schools adequate for 
the needs of a free people. When that is aroused, the thing is done, 
and the problem assumes another phase — the scientific phase. 

The first achievement of this public opinion will be the appro- 
priation of sufficient money for such schools. (Applause.) This 
money may be obtained by state appropriation, by local taxation 
and community effort, and by appropriation of unexpended balances 
by parish and county boards. A parallel achievement will be the 
consolidation of weak schools into strong central schools and the 
hauling of children to these central schools. 

It is believed that better schoolhouses, the trained teacher and 
all other blessings will follow in the wake of these achievements. 
Much has been accomplished in these directions by devoted men in 
the southwestern field during the last twenty years, but each new 
generation must fight for its life and for the life of the generation 
to come. 

The activities of the Southern Education Board during the past 
summer were expended upon Summer Schools at Lafayette and 
Lake Charles, La., and the general purposes of the board were 
understood and promulgated in the two schools at Monroe and 
Ruston. President Caldwell, of the State Normal School, and 
Superintendent Calhoun were intelligently fruitful and active 
throughout the whole state, and too much credit cannot be accorded 
them. Professors Dillard, Himes, Eswell and Showalter, in addi- 
tion to their regular duties in these schools, made it their business 
to preach the need for greater educational facilities throughout the 



58 The Conference for Education. 

state. An extensive campaign was conducted in the parish of 
Calcasieu by Professor Himes, of the Louisiana State University. 
In this great parish, \^hich contains a population of 35,000 people, 
thirty meetings were held and seventy addresses delivered. As a 
result of this activity, one ward voted outright a special tax of three 
mills and five others have voted the five-mill tax, amounting to a 
total of $15,000. (Applause.) Perhaps the best result of this single 
parish campaign was the revelation to the whole state of the possi- 
bilities of this great work and the revelation to all the other parishes 
of the good that can come to them by co-operation with these 
boards. 

The most notable events of the fall months in Louisiana were 
two great meetings, one for the white people and one for the negro 
people. The meeting of the parish superintendents of the state was 
held in New Orleans under the general direction of Dr. Wallace 
Buttrick, general agent of the General Education Board. It was 
attended by all of the superintendents of the state and was fruitful 
in practical suggestions and stimulation. The most distinct value 
of the meeting was the impulse given to the idea of consolidation 
of schools. Extensive consolidation has occurred in the parishes of 
Lafayette, Ascension, and Sabine, and it is proposed to consolidate 
eighteen districts in Iberia parish and to establish a central school 
from which no child will be distant more than two miles. 

The next great meeting was one for the colored race and was 
attended by the leading teachers and citizens of the negro race from 
all over the state. It was held in New Orleans in October and was 
under the general direction of Principal Booker T. Washington. 
The address of Principal Washington was characterized by his usual 
patriotic common sense and earnestness, and meant a good deal in 
the moulding of public opinion in the minds of the white race and 
fixing rational ideals in the minds of the colored race. 

I am glad to say to this Conference that conditions are now 
thoroughly promising for a fruitful campaign in the state of Loui- 
siana. The movement is now a genuine, whole-hearted movement, 
and the next three months will be months of real achievement in 
this work. (Applause.) That this is so we are indebted to the 
governor of the state, in whose parish of Union a ten-mill tax has 
been voted; the state superintendent, Hon. J. V. Calhoun, and the 
leading educators in the colleges and schools of the state. 



Edwin A. Alderman. 59 

The central educational campaign committee, consisting of the 
governor of the state, W. W. Heard ; the state superintendent, Hon. 
J. V. Calhoun; Colonel T. D. Boyd, president of Louisiana State 
University; President B. C. Caldwell, of the Louisiana State Nor- 
mal College, and myself, have appointed Mr. William M. Steele, 
of the Picayune, as executive secretary of that committee. Twenty 
parishes, carefully selected, have been chosen as the immediate field, 
sixty-five citizens of Louisiana, including the governor, state super- 
intendent, prominent teachers, state officers, eminent lawyers and 
business men, have accepted service as campaign speakers. Appoint- 
ments have been made already at twenty-five points, and the state 
will be covered in the next three months. (Applause.) The promi- 
nent men of the localities concerned, parish school boards and com- 
mittees of citizens are co-operating with the speakers and school 
officers. 

The opening meetings of this campaign were held at Broussard 
and Carencro on April ii and 12. The addresses were made by 
Governor Heard, President Caldwell, and Professor Fortier, who 
spoke in French, French being the language that gives them the im- 
pulse to vote more than English. These meetings were attended by 
1,900 people. Nearly every one present signed a petition for a three- 
mill tax, and this means the undoubted success of the movement. 

A call has been issued for a conference of the presidents of the 
parish boards of education and of the police juries, who are men 
of force and influence. This conference will meet in the early fall, 
and it will be its purpose to urge that all the money available in the 
parish treasuries be invested in the education of the children. 

Democracies are not in the habit of being carried in a chariot 
of enthusiasm to a height of civic perfection. (Applause.) The 
whole process is a toilsome one of convincing and persuading. 

I am not going to speak of difficulties here to-day. They are 
there, but it is our business to get rid of them, and not waste time 
talking about them. (Applause.) Perhaps, however, I may be 
pardoned for mentioning the Mississippi River. (Laughter and 
applause.) For a large, healthy, uncontrollable, ever present diffi- 
culty, commend me to the Mississippi River. It would seem that the 
great forces of nature had provided laws for other things — gravity 
and heat and things of that sort — but the Mississippi River goes its 
uninterrupted way. (Laughter.) It costs Louisiana a million 



6o The Conference for Education. 

dollars a year to control that river in normal times. It will cost this 
year a million and a half in addition to this. This is a very grave 
difficulty indeed, which the lower valley of the Mississippi should be 
relieved of by the United States Government. (Applause.) I think 
somebody ought to go to Congress on that platform. (Laughter.) 
It has been impossible to attempt anything practical in the river 
region this spring. Still I can say that it has not diminished the zeal 
of those people in educational matters. Indeed, it seems to have 
increased their interest in a way, as men are always more interested 
in vital things when they are in trouble. (Applause.) 

Two great summer schools will be held in Louisiana this sum- 
mer, one at Monroe and one at New Iberia. The school at Monroe 
is a combination of the schools formerly held at Ruston and Monroe, 
and has been generously helped by the General Education Board. 
The industrial plant of the Ruston Institute will be removed to 
Monroe and the industrial plant of the Southwestern Institute at 
Lafayette will be removed to New Iberia, it being intended thus to 
emphasize the industrial aspect of rural school education. President 
Aswell has general charge of the great summer school to be held 
at Monroe, and at both schools serious attention will be given to 
training of practical campaigners for the work in hand. 

Recent communications from the state superintendents of Mis- 
sissippi and Arkansas (Superintendents Whitfield and Hineman) 
enable me to say briefly that very genuine progress has taken place, 
under their wise direction, in both of those places in the last few 
months, and both of them are scenes of great activity in educational 
matters. (Applause.) In Mississippi a popular educational cam- 
paign was waged throughout all last summer with favorable results, 
eleven out of fourteen counties signifying their desire to increase 
the school tax. (Applause.) The average term of the rural school 
has been lengthened from six to eight months in the last two years. 
(Applause.) It is interesting to note that a leading issue in the 
gubernatorial election is the question of the improvement of the 
schools for all the people, white and black. (Applause.) There :s 
to be a summer school at the University of Mississippi under the 
direction of Chancellor Fulton, at which, in addition to the several 
subjects taught, it will be sought to arouse a concerted effort to send 
out men to battle for the school the coming year, which is to be an 
election year. 



Edwin A. Alderman. 6i 

The letter from Superintendent Hineman is of a most encour- 
aging character. The state legislature of Arkansas passed bills 
for better systematizing of the schools and the elevation of their 
standards. An important and significant sign of increasing interest 
in education in Arkansas is the fact that the salary of the superin- 
tendent's office has been increased so that it ranks next to the gov- 
ernor's, which is a progressive thing to do. (Applause.) The 
proposition to raise the state tax from three to. four mills failed by 
three votes. A bill providing for the State Normal School failed 
by a very small vote, but, as a measure of this sort had never before 
reached the third reading, I suppose this may be described as en- 
couraging. (Applause.) 

Wherever the community feels itself in a position to make a 
successful fight for better schools, a report of its intention is made 
to the secretary of our campaign committee, who immediately places 
at the disposal of the local authorities whatever speeches are at our 
command, and thus it is believed that the strongest influences will 
be made to co-operate with local interests and purposes. The fol- 
lowing brief summary will give some idea to this Conference of the 
result of educational activity in the parishes of the State of Loui- 
siana for the past year. It is not intended to leave the impression 
that this activity is directly or indirectly the result of work done 
by the agencies of the Southern Education Board, for much of it is 
due to a deep-seated purpose on the part of the people out of their 
own thinking to establish their schools solidly and enduringly. The 
figures are not complete, for parish and county superintendents 
sometimes consider it a perquisite of their offices not to reply to 
requests for statistical information. I am indebted to the kindness 
of Superintendent Calhoun for the figures herein submitted. 

There are fifty-eight parishes in Louisiana. In forty-eight of 
these parishes eighty-one new schoolhouses were built and these 
houses are of distinctly modern and effective type. In forty par- 
ishes from which replies were received, two hundred and thirty 
schoolhouses were repaired and refurnished. Increase of school 
income through local taxation has taken place in twenty-one parishes, 
amounting in money to $75,000. The parish police juries have 
increased the amount of money for schools by appropriation in 
fourteen parishes, amounting in money to $37,800. The state legis- 
lature increased the general amount of their appropriations by the 



62 The Conference for Education. 

sum of $128,000. All this does not include the city of New Orleans, 
and the total amount is $240,000. (Applause.) Campaigns are 
now under way in four great parishes, and in one, Cameron, it is 
proposed to increase the tax ten mills. I believe that there will be 
many other campaigns under way before the fall months. 

The last word I have to say to this Conference is, therefore, a 
distinct word of hope for the future and of praise to the citizens of 
Louisiana, from Governor Heard to the simplest man among them. 
Their response to our invitation to take part in this struggle is of 
such a character as to remove any doubt in my mind as to the ulti- 
mate result. The population of this region is not a tax-hating popu- 
lation. The press of the state, rural and urban, is behind this move- 
ment. The whole region is feeling the breath of the West and the 
spirit of illimitable growth and opportunity everywhere entering the 
consciousness of the Southern people. (Applause.) 

I have no novel suggestions to make. The moulding of public 
opinion is a slow business, but it is splendid and renovating when 
if is moulded. (Applause.) The thing- for us to do, therefore, is 
to hammer on until the desire for better schools, and all that belongs 
to better schools, becomes a contagion with the people. (Applause.) 

It is perhaps proper for me to state that, as district director of 
the Southern Education Board, it has been my privilege to make 
thirty-five public addresses in the past year on the subject of educa- 
tion, twenty-six of them being in Louisiana, Mississippi and Ala- 
bama, and nine in other states. By an extensive correspondence 
with the press and prominent citizens everywhere, I have done what 
I could to forward the purposes of this Conference in its desire 
to advance the good life of the nation. The people of Louisiana are. 
ready, as I have said, for large action. Their leaders are enthusi- 
astic and dead in earnest. (Applause.) Strengthened and stimu- 
lated by the healthfulness issuing from this Conference and from 
the Southern and General Education Boards, much lasting g-ood 
will be done. 

I desire to express my appreciation of the confidence and 
courtesy of these boards and of the wisdom and sympathy and far- 
sightedness of Dr. Wallace Buttrick, general agent of the General 
Education Board. (Applause.) 

The President : — I now have the pleasure of presenting to this 
Conference Dr. Charles D. Mclver, president of the State Normal 



. Charles D. M elver, 63 

College, of Greensboro, N. C, and a director in the Southern Edu- 
cation Board. 

Report from the Field. 
By Dr. Charles D. McIver, of North Carolina. 

Mr. President and Members of the Conference, Ladies and 
Gentlemen, I regret ,very much that I am obliged to read a paper to 
you, but that is what I have been instructed to do, and, as Dr. 
Dabney said, that is what we generally do when we are so instructed 
by our president. I hate to read and I like to talk, so you can 
imagine that if this paper bores you badly, it bores me more; you 
may take some consolation from that. (Laughter.) 

I wish to say before I begin my reading, for fear some one 
might think I do not know it, or that you do not know it, that in 
i860 North Carolina had as much money for each child of the 
white race as it had for each child in 1900; it took us that long 
to catch up. It is not a new subject. There has not been a time 
in Virginia, or in North Carolina, or any other Southern state, 
when there were not as good schools in those states as there were 
anywhere on the globe, as far as I know ; but there have not been 
enough of them; we had the quality, but not the quantity (Ap- 
plause), and that is what we are after now. 

At the Athens Conference a year ago, at the request of the 
program committee, I presented a statement in regard to my work 
as one of the district directors of the Southern Education Board, 
which was published in the proceedings of the conference. That 
statement explains the organization of the educational forces of 
North Carolina at the Raleigh Conference, and gives an account 
of the meetings at Greensboro on April 3 and 4, which marked the 
beginning of co-operation between the Southern Education Board 
and the General Education Board in field work. This statement also 
made clear that my work in North Carolina was in co-operation 
with Governor Aycock and State Superintendent Joyner, we three 
constituting the executive committee representing the organization 
conference held at Raleigh, February 13. 

At the Raleigh Conference, representing all educational inter- 
ests — state, denominational and private — the opinion was unanimous 
that all influences should be brought to bear upon the improvement 



64 The Conference for Education. 

of the rural public schools, that the consolidation of school dis- 
tricts, the improvement of schoolhouses and the adoption of the 
principle of local taxation for public education were our three fun- 
damental needs, and that there should be a systematic and persistent 
agitation to secure these ends. 

I have used the funds placed in my hands by the Southern 
Education Board to aid in this agitation. 

My work as district director has been largely, though not 
entirely, confined to North Carolina, and practically all of it has 
been done in connection with and through the following agencies : 

I. Educational Conferences for various purposes. 

II. A systematic popular campaign for local taxation. 

III. The organization and work of the Women's Association for 
the Betterment of Public Schoolhouses in North Carolina. 

I. 

Educational Conferences. — Conferences at Raleigh, Greensboro, 
Charlotte and Hickory were held. The general purpose of these 
conferences was the same, though the distinctive feature of the 
first at Raleigh was general organization, that of the second and 
third, at Greensboro and Charlotte, the promotion of the idea of 
community philanthropy, while the purpose of the fourth was to 
saturate a community with such educational sentiment as would 
make it ready to vote a special local tax for schools. 

All of the conferences were attended by the state superintendent, 
the governor, the president of the State University, the president of 
the Agricultural and Mechanical College, the president of the State 
Normal and Industrial College, and representatives of the leading 
denominational colleges of the state. A large number of public and 
private school-teachers and of citizens engaged in various callings 
were also present at each conference. (Applause.) 

I paid the railroad expenses of the superintendents of about 
fifty counties in the western part of the state, enabling each of 
them to attend one of the conferences, thus giving them an oppor- 
tunity to come in touch with one another and with the educational 
leaders of the state, and, at the same time, giving the state super- 
intendent an opportunity to outline a uniform plan for his lieutenants. 

We had planned to hold two conferences in the eastern part of 
North Carolina, but, finding that Secretary Buttrick, of the Gen- 



Charles D. Mclver. 65 

eral Education Board, was planning- a conference of all the county 
superintendents at Raleigh, I did not think it wise to hold any 
district conferences in the eastern portion of the state this year. 

In my judgment, no money has ever been spent more wisely 
than that which made it possible for the county superintendents to 
come together in the smaller conferences and in the general con- 
ferences at Raleigh. (Applause.) All of these conferences, except 
the two at Raleigh, produced a profound impression upon the com- 
munities in which they were held. The two conferences at Raleigh 
also did much to quicken educational thought throughout the state, 
because the newspapers at the capital and the special correspondents 
located there gave wide circulation to the important events of each 
conference. 

The work of the Greensboro Conference was told in the Athens 
report. I shall speak again, however, in this report, of some import- 
ant results of that conference. 

On May 2, just after the Athens Conference, our Charlotte 
Conference was held. An effort was made to repeat the work of the 
Greensboro Conference with one additional feature. We under- 
took to raise from the city of Charlotte $6,000, which, in turn, 
the General Education Board had agreed to duplicate, with the 
understanding that two-thirds of the amount should g^o to the rural 
schools of Mecklenburg County and one-third to the public schools 
of Henderson County situated in the mountain section of the state. 
Not quite all of this money was raised, but I am informed that all 
of it will be raised, and already several districts in Mecklenburg 
County have held elections on the local tax question, and in most 
of them the vote has been favorable. 

At the Hickory Conference, August 13 and 14, no effort was 
made to raise money for rural schools, because Hickory, though a 
town of considerable size and, of some importance in the state as a 
manufacturing centre, had not yet voted a local tax upon its own 
property. In addition to the ordinary work of the conference, every 
effort was made to strengthen public sentiment in Hickory. About 
one year previous to the conference, the town had voted upon the 
question of levying a local tax and the movement was defeated. 
Since the Hickory Conference it has voted again, and favorably, 
upon the question (Applause), and Hickory will soon have a good 
school system, though it is necessary for the people to provide new 
5 



66 The Conference for Education. 

buildings as well as maintain the schools. I would not claim that 
our conference at Hickory was the sole cause of the favorable vote, 
but unquestionably it was of great assistance to the friends of the 
cause. (Applause.) 

At all the conferences the state superintendent had an oppor- 
tunity to work very effectively in behalf of consolidation of school 
districts. The number of school districts now in North Carolina is 
about two hundred less than the number was on July i, 1901. 



II. 

Popular Campaign for Local Taxation. — In the month of June, 
the state superintendent, the governor and your district director 
planned an active campaign for local taxation, employing as our 
secretary and manager one of the best educational workers in the 
state. By correspondence and personal conferences with representa- 
tive people from different sections of the state, he and the state 
superintendent advertised appointments for various speakers who 
have been selected as suitable men to impress the doctrines of local 
taxation and universal education. Two hundred or more speeches 
were made. Most conspicuous among the campaigners from among 
the political and other leaders of the state were : Governor Aycock, 
ex-Senator and ex-Governor Thomas J. Jarvis, Congressman John 
H. Small, State Auditor B. F. Dixon, R. B. White, Esq., member 
of the state legislature ; J. W. Bailey, editor of the Biblical Recorder; 
ex-State Senator A. M. Scales, ex- Attorney-General R. D. Douglas, 
the last two chairmen, respectively, of the Democratic and Republi- 
can executive committees of Guilford County. Each of these 
speakers was usually accompanied by an active teacher familiar 
with every phase of the educational question. (Applause.) 

The educators who took an active part in the campaign were 
headed by State Superintendent Joyner, ex-State Superintendent 
Mebane, ex-State Superintendent Scarborough, the presidents of the 
state colleges, the presidents or professors of nearly all of the 
leading denominational colleges, superintendents of the city public 
schools, county superintendents, and others. (Applause.) These 
speeches were made chiefly in the months of June, July and August. 

Already last summer's campaign has borne fruit, as several 
districts have voted a special tax and many places are preparing to 



Charles D. Mclver. 67 

vote it. The most significant fact that I can state in regard to the 
North Carolina campaign is that the audiences attending the educa- 
tional meetings in June, July, and August were larger than the 
audiences that attended the political speakings in the months of Sep- 
tember and October preceding the November election. (Applause.) 
Several of the speakers were in both campaigns, and the governor, 
who is probably the most effective and popular political campaigner 
in the state, says that his audiences at his fifteen speeches in the 
educational campaign were larger than the audiences he addressed 
at any fifteen political gatherings. (Applause.) To a person who 
knows North Carolina, this means a revolution in public thinking 
so far as education is concerned, for the political speakers had as 
large audiences as they usually had except in a year when there was 
a Presidential election. (Applause.) 

The educational campaign was participated in by political 
leaders, educators, editors, clergymen, lawyers, physicians, business 
men and farmers. 

To some extent this campaign would have been carried on even 
if there had been no Southern Education Board, but I would not 
know how to estimate the value of the assistance the Board has 
rendered by paying the traveling expenses of most of the cam- 
paigners and defraying the expenses for literature and campaign 
organization. It should be said here that the traveling expenses 
of the governor and state superintendent were paid by themselves. 

I have felt all the time that, acting as the agent of the Southern 
Education Board, it was my business to find out where valuable 
educational work was going on and then to use the means it placed 
at my disposal to intensify and multiply the force of that work, 
rather than undertake to inaugurate new schemes or independent 
campaigns, or wage any warfare upon itidividuals or movements 
that did not meet my approval or the approval of those I was repre- 
senting. It was worth more to the cause of universal education to 
strengthen those who are fighting for it than to fight those who 
are pulling the other way. (Applause.) Truth needs nothing but 
agitation in a fair, open field. (Applause.) 

In addition to the work of the speakers in the campaign, three 
or four hundred dollars was spent in preparing and disseminating 
educational literature through newspapers and special tables of 
local statistics bearing upon the subject of taxation for schools. 



68 The Conference for Education. 

consolidation of school districts and improvements of public school- 
houses. 

III. 

Women's Association for the Betterment of Public School- 
houses in North Carolina. — Just before the close of the past college 
year, I undertook to organize, through the students of the State 
Normal and Industrial College, a women's movement for the 
improvement of the public schoolhouses of the state. It is the 
women rather than the men who have made the churches in the town 
and in the country attractive and habitable. (Applause.) Men 
have had the exclusive management of courthouses and largely the 
exclusive management of schoolhouses, and upon both the marks of 
masculinity and neglect are plainly visible. (Laughter.) 

This organization, called the " Women's Association for the 
Betterment of Public Schoolhouses in North Carolina," includes now 
not only students of the State Normal and Industrial College, but 
representative women, teachers and others, in various sections of 
the state. About twenty counties have good organizations, and 
literature has been sent to all the other counties. The purpose of 
this association is to organize small clubs or branch associations 
around each public school where there are three or more women 
who will volunteer their services to improve each year the school- 
house and grounds. There is no membership fee, except that the 
women have decided that men may become associate members, if 
they desire to do so, by paying an annual fee of one dollar. 

We held a meeting of ten or fifteen women, including the offi- 
cers of this association, last June at Morehead City, during the ses- 
sion of the North Carolina Teachers' Assembly. 

In addition to furnishing literature, I agreed to pay the expenses, 
to a limited extent, of ten workers in the field. So far the entire 
expense of the association has not reached $300. In the meantime 
it has secured the co-operation of the Youth's Companion, which 
assists in furnishing literature, and sends pictures as premiums to 
those schools that take steps towards beautifying their houses and 
grounds. (Applause.) The newspapers of the state have been 
exceedingly generous towards this organization, as well as to the 
other movements in which I have participated as district director of 
the board. 



Charles D. M elver. 69 

The association has decided to join the Federation of Women's 
Clubs in the state. The president of the Federation, Mrs. Lindsay 
Patterson, of Winston-Salem, is one of the most effective workers 
for school improvement. I am thoroughly satisfied that every dollar 
invested in aiding the 2,000 members of this Women's Association 
will sooner or later yield a most bountiful harvest of good to our 
cause. 

Guilford County. — I have thought that you would be especially 
interested to know the progress made in Guilford County, beginning 
with the conference held in Greensboro, the county seat, on April 3 
and 4, 1902. This was the first of our conferences after the Raleigh 
meeting for organization. It was the first meeting attended by the 
county superintendents in large numbers. It will be remembered 
that, by private subscriptions, $4,000 was raised at this conference 
to promote the cause of public education in the rural districts of 
Guilford County, and that the General Education Board duplicated 
this amount, making the total fund $8,000, which amount was after- 
wards increased a few hundred dollars by various subscriptions. 

The local board appointed at the conference to manage this 
fund imm.ediately offered to aid any rural school district that would 
vote a special local school tax to supplement the present state and 
county fund. In the meantime, a steady campaign was begun to 
urge upon the people the importance of voting the tax independent 
of outside help. So far nine districts have voted this special tax, 
and have received, or will receive, aid from the Greensboro Con- 
ference fund. (Applause.) In no instance have we lost an elec- 
tion, though in one case our majority was only one vote and in 
another only four votes. (Applause.) We hope to carry every 
district in the county within two years from the date of the con- 
ference, but if we do not, the fund will all go to those districts that 
vote the tax. 

Our Committee has proposed to give $1,000 to the first of the 
fifteen rural townships in the county that votes a three-mill tax, or 
thirty cents on every hundred dollar's worth of property in the entire 
township and ninety cents on each poll. This vote, wherever 
carried, will increase the annual school fund nearly 100 per cent, 
and will more than double the efficiency of the schools. At the 
same time, by actual count, four-sevenths of the taxpayers of the 
fifteen rural townships would pay less than ninety cents property tax 



70 The Conference for Education. 

of the special tax so voted, as four-tenths of the taxpayers are 
assessed less than $300. 

My own work in the Guilford County campaign has been an 
effort to get these facts into the minds of every citizen of the county. 
The same figures are approximately correct for any county in North 
Carolina. I have placed the facts and figures in every home in the 
fifteen rural townships of Guilford, through newspapers and printed 
tables, and we hope not to be defeated in a single election in the 
county. 

These statements will, I think, explain to you why we are mov- 
ing a little more slowly in Guilford than might appear at first to be 
necessary. We began with single districts where sentiment was 
most favorable. Now we are soon to have an election for an 
entire township instead of a district, and some citizens have recently 
suggested that we try the entire county at once. (Applause.) 
This last suggestion will probably not be followed, and I only men- 
tion it to show progress in favorable sentiment and growing confi- 
dence among the friends of the cause. 

So far our local board in Guilford County has made no hard 
and fast rule as to the amount of money to be appropriated to each 
district from the $8,000 fund, but usually in the districts that have 
voted the local tax we have given one dollar for every two raised 
by private subscription to build and furnish schoolhouses. To illus- 
trate, a district voted a local tax and agreed to raise by private 
subscription $400 for a schoolhouse, and we gave them $200. 
Another district voted the tax and besides raised $800, to which 
we added $400, making a total building fund of $1,200. Of this 
$1,200 it will be seen, therefore, that the General Education Board 
contributes $200, or one-sixth, the private contributors at the Greens- 
boro Conference $200, or one-sixth, while the immediate locality 
furnishes two-thirds of the amount, besides voting the annual tax 
to double its school fund. I cannot conceive of a finer educational 
investment than this, where one philanthropic dollar is met by 
another philanthropic dollar and four local dollars, all f^om private 
sources, and at the same time the whole community is encouraged 
to vote an annual tax that will permanently double the efficiency 
of its schools. (Applause.) 

If this proportion should be kept up through the county, the 
$4,000 given by the General Education Board will result in the 



Charles D. M elver. 71 

raising of $20,000 in the county by private subscriptions, and a 
special tax for schools amounting annually to more than $10,000. 
Undoubtedly this tax would be voted some time in the future 
without aid from any outside source; and it is proper to say 
here that I had the promise of $1,500 from Greensboro people 
for stimulating purposes before the General Education Board agreed 
to duplicate all we could raise, not exceeding $4,000; but without 
the stimulus of its generous offer we could not have hoped for a 
large fund, and the voting of the special local tax in the rural dis- 
tricts of Guilford County would have been postponed to a con- 
siderably later date. 

In less than two years from the date of the Greensboro Con- 
ference, it is probable that Guilford County alone will have more 
special school-tax communities than all the state of North Carolina 
had ten years ago, including its towns and cities. (Applause.) 

Our able state superintendent of public instruction, Hon. J. Y. 
Joyner, has furnished me statistics recently secured from most of 
the counties, showing that in those counties there are now seventy- 
nine towns and cities and rural communities that have a special local 
school tax, that elections are pending in forty-five districts, and that 
in nearly one hundred other communities the question of a local 
school tax is being considered and agitated with probable elections 
soon. (Applause.) 

It is interesting to note that the three counties aided by thd 
Greensboro Conference and the General Education Board with a 
bonus of twenty thousand dollars, have been more active than any 
other three counties in the state during the past year, this aid to the 
rural districts being exactly in the line of the aid of the Peabody 
Fund to Greensboro, Charlotte and other towns and cities in North 
Carolina when they first voted a special local tax for schools. 

Guilford County now has nine local tax districts, besides Greens- 
boro and High Point, and about ten other districts are considered 
favorable for an election during the next six months. 

Mecklenburg County has three local tax districts, besides Char- 
lotte, and has one election pending and three other districts con- 
sidered favorable. 

Henderson County, in the mountains of western North Carolina, 
has three local tax districts, elections pending in two districts, and 
four other districts considered favorable. 



72 The Conference for Education. 

As showing the tendency to consolidation, the number of 
school districts in Henderson County is three less than it was last 
June ; the number of districts in Guilford County is four less than it 
was last June, and the number of districts in Mecklenburg County 
is six less than it was last June. 

IV. 

Recent Legislation. — Assuming that this conference of friends 
from all sections of the country will be interested in the progress 
made by any state, whether it is due to the work of the Southern 
Education Board or not, I call your attention to the following facts 
in regard to the legislation enacted by the North Carolina legislature 
which adjourned in March : 

First. — While it reduced many general appropriations and 
reduced the sum total of its appropriations below what they were 
two years ago, it increased every educational appropriation. 

Second. — It adopted every official recommendation of the state 
superintendent of public instruction, with one exception, and that 
suggestion, to provide for deputy state superintendents, will be made 
again and probably enacted into law two years from now. 

Third. — It increased the clerical force of the state superintendent 
of public instruction, and increased the salary of that officer thirty- 
three and one-third per cent. So far as I recall, this is the second 
state salary increased by the legislature during the past twenty 
years. (Applause.) It is proper to state that, at Superintendent 
Joyner's request, the increase in salary will not become effective 
until his present term of office expires, two years from now. 

Fourth. — It established a $200,000 loan fund, to be used under 
the direction of the State Board of Education for the building and 
improving of pubHc schoolhouses. (Applause.) Each loan must 
be returned in ten annual instalments, with 4 per cent interest paid 
annually. This arrangement provides a $200,000 loan for this 
year and a perpetual annual loan fund of $28,000. 

Fifth. — The appropriation of $5,000 for rural libraries was 
increased to $7,500, $2,500 of which is to go to the improvement of 
the nearly five hundred rural libraries established within the past 
two years, and the other $5,000 to be used as the first $5,000 was 
used, to establish new libraries. Under this plan the school dis- 
trict raises $10 by private subscription, the county fund pays $10 



Charles D. M elver. 73 

and the state fund pays $10, so that this $7,500 appropriation means 
$22,500 to be invested in reading for the children of rural districts 
in addition to the $15,000 recently so invested. (Applause.) 

Sixth. — The compensation of the county superintendents was 
increased fifty per cent, and provision was made for paying- the 
expenses of county superintendents to attend a state meeting of the 
superintendents once a year. (Applause.) 

Seventh. — The plans of all new schoolhouses must be approved 
by the county boards of education and the state superintendent. 

Eighth. — The general law for local taxation was made as favor- 
able as practicable, and forty or fifty special acts were passed allow- 
ing as many communities to vote upon the question of local taxation 
and the establishment of graded schools. (Applause.) Most of 
these, of course, were in the rural districts. 

So much for education in North Carolina. I do not pretend 
to claim that all these encouraging signs are the result of the work 
of the Southern Education Board. The board is simply a helper, 
and any board may be gratified to aid in work where there is so 
much activity and where the signs are pointing in the right direction. 

In addition to my work in North Carolina, I have, since our 
last meeting at Athens, in co-operation with the governor and the 
state school commissioner of Georgia, and the governor and the state 
superintendent of South Carolina, visited those states with a view to 
aiding in an organization similar to the one made at the Raleigh 
Conference more than a year ago. 

In Georgia I met Governor Terrell, State School Commissioner 
Merritt, Hon. Hoke Smith, Bishop Candler, Chancellor Hill, Presi- 
dent Branson and other leading educators, and found them ready to 
welcome the co-operation of the Southern Education Board in a 
local tax campaign as soon as the constitutional provision of Georgia 
relative to local taxes for schools should be amended so as to give 
a fair chance to the people to vote special taxes for schools. An 
amendment looking to this end has passed one branch of the legis- 
lature and will probably pass the other house in June and be sub- 
mitted to the people for ratification. At present, before a local tax 
can be levied in Georgia, it is necessary to have the endorsement of 
two grand juries, and, at the election, two-thirds of the registered 
voters. This is an ironclad protection against taxing property. 

On April 11, I met at Columbia, South Carolina, Governor Hey- 



74 The Conference for Education. 

ward, State Superintendent Martin, President D. B. Johnson, and 
more than forty other educators representing every phase of educa- 
tional work in South CaroHna. They adopted a plan of campaign 
and issued an address to the people of South Carolina similar to 
that issued at the Raleigh Conference a year ago last February to 
the people of North Carolina. South Carolina's law is very favor- 
able to local taxation, and her constitutional tax without local 
taxation is three mills, or thirty cents on every one hundred dollars' 
worth of property, as compared with North Carolina's legislative 
and constitutional tax of eighteen cents on every one hundred dol- 
lars' worth of property. 

Much enthusiasm was manifested at Columbia, and I believe 
that we may look forward to a vigorous campaign for public educa- 
tional improvements in that state.. South Carolina is ahead of most 
Southern States in the practice of local taxation. It already has two 
hundred local tax communities. (Applause.) 

The President: — It is now my privilege and pleasure to pre- 
sent to you Dr. St. Clair McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, 
for whom no introduction is needed, and for whose speech we need 
every second of time. (Applause.) 

Address — The North and the South. 
By Dr. St. Clair McKelway. 

(Taking president's gavel, amid laughter.) My friends, the 
possibility of the chairman going on a strike led me to take this 
preventive measure. 

I am most agreeably conscious of the fortitude of the Old 
Dominion. It is a commonwealth of speech-making, and its ability 
to endure, its capacity to bear, have been converted into a proverb : 
"Old Virginia never tires." (Laughter.) I shall not try to press 
that proverb to an extreme. 

What I shall have to say will not in detail affect the subject of 
public education; it will be affected, as all subjects in our land are 
affected, by public education. I will say right here now that for 
a man old enough to remember the significance of the term " War 
Governor" this, and " War Governor" that, the substitution, not in 
the parlance of politics but in the parlance of the people, of " Educa- 
tional Governor," indicates not only the great advance of peace 



St. Clair McKelway. 75 

through progress and of progress through peace, but also the great 
advance in spirituaHty, in tranquilHty and in moral and material 
interests which has come over our land. (Applause.) 

And that leads me to say that those with whom and for whom 
I have the honor to speak would bring to those to whom I have the 
honor to speak the greetings of the North to the South. New York, 
from which I come, and Virginia, in whose capital city I speak, 
belong to the aristocracy of America. They are numbered among 
the original thirteen. Both are battle-scarred with Revolutionary 
suffering and crowned with Revolutionary triumphs. Both have 
been united to defend the Union against every foreign foe. Both 
are a unit in the spirit of right between men and of justice between 
states, which makes, and which alone can keep, the Republic peace. 
(Applause.) Our public life and our public forces have under- 
gone, without structural shock, a continuous development of a 
century and of a quarter of a century of years. Yours underwent 
prostration and re-creation into and under absolutely new condi- 
tions within a time less than half a century past. Of memories you 
have as rich a heritage as we. But from some responsibility and 
from some retarding causes you are free — and we are not. You 
had the not always injurious opportunity either for a man or for 
a state, to begin all over again. We inherit and we carry all our 
years, with all their infirmities and with all their errors, as well as 
with all their advances and successes. You should be better than 
we are, for " purified as if by fire" is the figure of inspiration which 
signifies disencumberment from alloy and deliverance from dross, 
release from rust and from many corrupting and corroding influ- 
ences. (Applause.) The resultant is the contemporary South, 
which attests not only the originality, the resiliency and the inde- 
structibility of your section, but also the homogeneous character of 
our now happily common country. (Applause.) 

The contemporary North is in sympathy with the contem- 
porary South. We recognize that with you, as with us, the folk 
who face towards the future outnumber those who faced toward 
the past by many to one. The young captain and the young 
soldiers of industry refuse no reverence to the veterans of the 
Civil War on either side, but the men of this generation are deter- 
mined to run it. (Applause.) The sons will preserve and will 
magnify the fame of their fathers, but they will not foster or 



76 The Conference for Education. 

fight over again their feuds (applause), since the fathers them- 
selves, an illustrious and a pathetically thinning band, long ago 
renounced rancor and dissolved differences. (Applause.) Let 
what people that may elect to do otherwise, the effectives, both of 
the North and of the South, to-day believe in factories quite as 
much as in pantheons, in energy more than in inquests, and in 
schoolhouses more than in graves. A spent quarrel, not of our 
making and not of yours, shall not be revived or reworked to 
the unmaking of either of us. (Applause.-) We will filially honor 
the shades of our ancestors, but we will not cut ourselves among 
their tombs. (Applause.) We will honor, as children their parents, 
the survivors of the struggle between the states. May their days 
and ours still be long in the land which the Lord our God gave 
to them — and to us. The fulness and the fervency and the faith 
of that prayer shall not, however, affect the fact that to the men 
of each generation belong the moiety of the duties and the whole 
of the destiny of that generation. (Applause.) Our fathers fought 
out the questions which their forefathers left unsettled. We recog- 
nize and rejoice in the settlement of those questions. (Applause.) 
But we are resolved that neither the charm of historical study, nor 
the passions nor the pathos of poetry, nor the pious exaltation which 
shrines incite and monuments inspire shall to-day hold back North 
and South from the new and noble obligations and from the benign 
and brotherly competitions of this teeming time. (Applause.) 
Better a decade of love and peace than a cycle of the mutilations 
and of the memories of the civil war ! 

Let what I have said explain and justify my omission to dwell 
on sentimental lines of allusion. Frankly, I think those lines have 
been overworked. There was reason for the accenting them until 
a few years ago. The reason ceased when the object was attained. 
It was attained when it became neither singular nor unpopular 
to have and to hold in either section views which were different 
from those which predominate its thought. We of the North 
have opened to the men of the South among us the gates of 
all possible preferment. Those to whom such gates have been 
opened keep as holy traditions that estimate of the civil struggle 
which they maintained in the forum or defended in the field, or 
learned from the songs their mothers sung over their cradles. 
Their cherished hold upon lapsed questions no more interferes with 



St. Clair McKehvay. 77 

usefulness, acceptability and popularity with us than does any other 
heirloom in the furniture of their minds. Among them I could name 
congressmen, judges, legislators and many master helpers in great 
commercial and fiduciary trusts. Moreover, with us they belong 
indifferently to either political party, or, better yet, some of their 
views are in every party and all of them in none. V/ith you, I hope, 
is the same spirit of liberality. You can feel it as much as we do, 
though you cannot show it so readily as we do. We appreciate 
the reason why. With us there is no race question that comes 
so near to us as our doors. With you there is. Besides, there are 
not so many of you as there are of us, nor among you is there so 
large a proportion of those who differed from you in the past, as 
the case is with us. The number of people determines the quantity 
of government. The quantity of government determines the num- 
ber of preferments. In the same way the amount of population 
determines the volume of business, and that in turn determines the 
appeal of ability to opportunity and the yield of opportunity to 
ambition. There is a fact, however, which has not escaped our 
Northern notice. Those of our people who come among you, stay 
among you. They would not do that if they did not like you. 

Nor has another fact eluded our observation. They not only 
like you, but they grow into voting with you on questions which 
affect their business, their home interests and their racial instinct 
in the South. If with us they were adherents to one party, with 
you, by force of circumstances, they become adherents to another. 
This does not necessarily involve any change of fundamental views. 
It only involves a question of relationship. A blanket could cover 
both parties in nearly every state on any question which they 
sincerely advance. But a blanket would not cover, and it cannot 
be stretched to cover, which of the two parties in all the circum- 
stances is the better instrumentality for the results which must 
be fostered and preserved in the interests of citizenship, civiliza- 
tion and the home. Still, with you and with us, in intellectual con- 
templation, party is becoming a factor, not a fetich; a servant, not 
a master; a means, not an end. (Applause.) Any other view of it 
than this tends to make a man not a citizen, but a slave; not a 
suffragan, but a serf ; not a voter, but a victim. (Applause.) How- 
ever it may be with you here in the South, with us in the North 
only the politicians grieve over the disintegration between parties 



78 The Conference for Education. 

or within either party. Only those who have long lived and who 
would longer live upon the public treasury are sorry that the people 
are inclined to change their servants at the capital either of the 
nation or of the state. That tendency corrects the vicious habit 
inherent in too many officeholders of fawning upon and of fearing 
their constituents, instead of instructing them and leading them. 
They would substitute isms for principles, devices for doctrines, 
bids for facts, promises for performances, diatribes for discussion 
and defamation for definitions. They would appeal to the prejudices 
and to the demands of an organized few, instead of to the interests, 
to the honor and to the duty of all. With us the tide of truth and 
of manhood has risen higher among the people than among the 
managing politicians. There has been a manifest and an overwhelm- 
ing revolt against the lowering conception of public intelligence by 
beaten bosses, by misleading leaders, by discomfited demagogues and 
by stranded cranks. 

While at the confessional, let me admit that with us the question 
of how government shall be conducted on its business side outclasses 
the consideration of how it shall be conducted on the lines of its 
theories. The issue of clean and honest, frugal and simple, respon- 
sible, indictable and punishable administration with us overlays 
issues of purely fantastic import. We have got through with the 
currency question, and we hope you have also. (Laughter and 
(applause.) As to you this supposition may be wrong or prema- 
iture, but we have learned in a hard school of experience and of 
suffering that cheap money degrades not only our fiscal standing 
at home, but our commercial and moral standing among the nations 
of the world. To their opinion we cannot be indifferent. With 
their general welfare our own is bound up. We have also learned, 
and we hope you have, that periodical business uncertainty means 
periodical, if not intermediate, business prostration. And we should 
also learn that he should be regarded as selfish, and not as statesman- 
like, who would gamble with the interests or fears of business for 
political purposes or for political effect. (Applause.) While bear- 
ing the ills we have rather than -flying to others which we know not 
of, the sanity of the North, and, we hope, the sanity of the South 
would retire from the field of experiment the attempt to harmonize 
in a single enactment of mammoth proportions and of infinite 
intricacy the theories of any political party or the avarice of any 



St. Clair McKelway. 79 

two in combination. (Applause.) We would like to substitute a 
bi-partisan or non-partisan commission of business men as a perma- 
nent corps of experts on economic subjects for a system of com- 
petition responding to the greed of contributing and recouping 
monoplies, or to the intellectual indigestion of anaemic visionaries. 
Our business laws should be a hodge-podge neither of hysterics nor 
of hypocrisy. The dictionary is too small for the mind of a child. 
The ramified needs, the multitudinous interests and the diversified 
resources and activities of our people are too large for settlement on 
party lines. The effort to satisfy the wants and the notions, the 
views and dreams, the hunger and the appetite of combinations 
and sections by political legislation has freighted with scandal and 
clogged with confusion more than one endeavor to make the streams 
of revenue run up hill, to stimulate trade by destroying markets, to 
reduce the cost of living by taxing necessaries and to promote the 
content of the poor by letting in luxuries free. (Applause.) Our 
people are aroused, and, we hope, yours are aroused with us, to the 
nonsense, and worse, of all this sort of thing. (Applause.) We 
may have to postpone any new method of business adjustment till 
after the national convulsion of 1904. But after that task, from the 
very friction of t^yo schools of opinion, independent men should 
deduce a plan to secure just such legislation as will bring revenue to 
a needed figure and as will, for the rest of the matter, let well enough 
alone. We have been beset by theories and we have been confronted 
by contentions. We prefer the conditions we know to the theories 
we do not know, the devils which we have to the devils that may 
desire to have us. 

If I have touched upon public subjects, I have tried to do so 
without offence. No body of Americans can meet without thinking 
of them. No gathering called in the name and cause of education 
can well keep its mind from them. No company from an extremely 
practical portion of the land can greet the representatives of the 
great state of Virginia without a consciousness of the common needs 
of a common nationality. From what I have said I have purposely 
left out the party nouns and party adjectives, which have on men, 
otherwise sane, the incensing effect of red rags on the horned and 
bellowing terrors of field and plain. (Laughter and applause.) My 
countrymen, if we leave the quarrel words out of our contests or 
out of our contentions, out of our speeches and out of our journalisni. 



8o The Conference for Education. 

we will go far toward finding out that the things wherein we agree 
vastly outnumber and immensely outclass the things whereon we 
differ. Take, for instance, the lapsed question of bimetallism. That 
was a great and mouth-filling word with us as well as with you. 
(Laughter.) I never knew of a human being who was against it, 
if international agreement made it possible, or who could tell how 
such agreement could be brought about. (Laughter.) We learned 
that if we went at it alone the nobler metal rose to a premium and 
its parity with the baser would become a barren ideality. We 
learned that if we undertook it in conjunction with other nations, 
they must be nations of our own class and that such nations refused 
their co-operation. We could not undertake it of ourselves. We 
could not propose it to our peers among governments without draw- 
ing their respectful declination. Our politics had been better, our 
lives had been sweeter, our friendships had been finer, had we left 
such quarrel words as silver craze, gold bugs, coin clippers, pluto- 
crats, bloated bondholders and roaring repudiators out of the con- 
tention. (Applause.) Take any other of the subjects, for instance, 
by which, with wind and tongue, demagogues have divided our 
people. Recur for a moment to the tariff. The concern of it must 
be revenue for the government. An auxiliary consideration of it 
must be the wage of the people. The first must be enough and the 
second must not be reduced. It logically follows that duties must 
conserve and preserve rates. That rule followed out would produce 
a business tariff which it would be a satire to baptize with any party 
name; as much of a satire as it would be politically to christen a 
civil or a criminal code. (Applause.) 

In the same way, take up Civil Service Reform. It is based 
on the proposition that public business is business, and that it is 
not more or less with the word public put in front of it than with 
that word left out. (Applause.) From this it follows that, as for 
all business, competency, fidelity and intelligence should be a con- 
dition of appointment and security of tenure, so in all business should 
merit, experience, capacity and character deserve and obtain promo- 
tion. Should our state governments and our national government 
apply to their business the sanity, the justice and the enterprise 
which flowed into such Southern results as the Atlanta, the Nash- 
ville, the Charleston and the New Orleans Expositions, making 
them splendid successes of art, skill, labor and co-operation, mixed 



St. Clair McKelway. 8i 

with brains, we should almost reach the threshold of the golden 
age which is the desire of nations. What stands in the way of this 
is something of which we have no right to be proud, and yet which 
we have no power to deny. We realize it in the silence of our con- 
sciences. We admit it in the candor of personal intercourse. It is 
the barbarous theory that politics is war, that offices are spoils and 
that elections are a motley alternation of evictions and of loot. But 
for the superiority of our national character to our national conten- 
tions, this theory would be carried from controversy into conduct. 
That done, we could almost dispense with all officers except sheriffs 
and receivers. I plead, for the debates of politics and for the argu- 
ments of journalism, the sanity of spirit which maintains the credit 
of our republic and which gives to its service the stability, solidity 
and morality which should be questioned only in the caves of 
Sicilian bandits, or on the decks of pirate ships in Chinese seas. 

I might run the gamut of all questions by which, since the war, 
South and North have been at times divided, and by which they 
have been divided within parties as well as between them. My 
object, however, will have been accomplished if I have suggested to 
the friends with whom I came and to the friends that we have made 
here, the fact that we all really agree, rather than actually differ, 
on matters of vivid and vital concern to our commonwealths and 
to our republic. Too little of our argument argues. Too little 
of our debate debates. Too much of our contention is about names 
rather than about things. Too much of our controversy is around 
terms rather than around truth. Too much of our talk is for victory 
rather than for veracity. Reform in these respects must be inductive 
rather than direct. It must begin with the chief sinners, our states- 
men and our journalists. We must import into our writings and 
into our speeches more of candor and less of passion. We must 
make our words perfectly plain rather than deliberately ambiguous. 
(Applause.) The best place for us to look for the best public 
is in our own hearts. What there we find to be true will be every- 
where and everlastingly true. The things other men are thinking 
about are the things we think about when we think within our- 
selves. The statesman or the journalist who does that becomes, 
by the laws of universal nature, on confidential terms with human- 
ity. " To thine own self be true," was the injunction of Polonius 
to Laertes. " Know thyself," was the injunction of a still greater 
6 



82 The Conference for Education. 

philosopher. Thereby comes courage. Thereby comes strength. 
Thereby comes the assurance which made the heart of Paul in- 
domitable and the words of Paul immortal : " If God be for us 
who can be against us?" The intense earnestness and the equal 
simplicity which will follow from the conjunction of our own heart 
with the heart of the race will make oratory unstilted, journalism 
unsophistical, statesmen fearless and free. It would deliver us 
from the miserable spectacle of Northern and Southern senators 
and congressmen voting for what they condemn in their own 
minds, yet voting for it lest the rapacity or ignorance of their 
sections may defeat them for re-election. The wretched manifes- 
tation of men of historic names and fames talking drivelling slush 
to rabble throngs would not then challenge the scorn of men or 
the judgment of heaven. The people of both sections are far 
better than those who give to them a low moral rating. Their 
intelligence is far greater than is that of those who serve out to 
them the food on which fools are fed. (Great applause.) Readers 
better edit editors than editors their papers when the latter put into 
them anything which they know to be wholly false or only partially 
true. (Applause.) 

My state, your state, our nation, await the men of thought and 
the men of action to clear the way. At no time was the need of them 
greater or the prospect of them more auspicious. None of the 
periods of the politics of mediocrity or of intellectual immorality 
in America has been long. When one party has seemed nearly 
destitute of statesmen and when the other has seemed too over- 
stocked with partisans of the second rank, some thinker or some 
moralist has risen or recurred to view, to speak the longed-for and 
the desired word to the attentive ear and to the hoping heart of a 
noble people. I know that such a man will somewhere be found — or 
rediscovered. (Great and long applause.) I know not whence he 
will come, but I know that at our end of the country political philoso- 
phy was not all buried in the grave of Hamilton, or judicial greatness 
with the bones of Kent, and that practical statesmanship was not 
committed to the dust when DeWitt Clinton was laid to rest or Silas 
Wright tenderly entombed. (Great applause.) And so I know 
that not in Virginia is the roll of great men the roll of the dead 
alone. The spirit of Patrick Henry is as alive as his words. The 
sublimity of Washington can be conceded to no single mortal, but 



St. Clair McKelway. 83 

portions of his transcendent qualities can be ascribed to the heirs of 
his fame and to the guardians of his dust. The versatility, the 
philosophy and the genius of Jefferson may be united in one being, 
but his virtues and his principles cannot be confined or restrained 
— or parodied — in the state which he virtually made and which 
in large sense made him. (Applause.) The example as well as 
the decisions, the character as well as the logic, the life as well as the 
learning of John Marshall (Applause) are neither an extinct nor 
an outlawed inheritance among his people. The genius and the faith 
of Stonewall Jackson will ever be a factor among those he led and 
for whom he died. The greatness and the grandeur, the magna- 
nimity and the modesty, the consecration and the courage, the 
example and the incentive personified on the field of war and in the 
still air of delightful studies in collegiate shades will not only be 
forever a benediction, but forever a transforming influence, not only 
within Virginia, not only within the South, not only throughout the 
republic, but across the seas and around the world, wherever men 
pronounce the deathless name and emulate the fame of Robert E. 
Lee. (Applause.) 

Nor can any New Yorker, nor can any Virginian any more 
than any Georgian, nor can any American, especially can no Ameri- 
can of my profession, despair of commonwealth or of country when 
he recalls the familiar figure and the shining face of Henry Grady. 
(Applause.) His presence was an incarnate welcome. His voice 
was an inspiring appeal. His thought and the memory of it are an 
uplifting power. From the South he gathered, so to speak, his heart 
and mind. His experience of it made the very blood and brawn 
and brain of his life. He gathered the best of what he was and 
knew and felt, and had wrought into deathless words, which he 
came among us to deliver, and, delivering, to die. More immortal 
he than the immortals he joined. He entered their ranks younger 
than they were at their translation. The initial date of his eternity 
was earlier than theirs. Better, perhaps, that he died on the thresh- 
old of a great career. He died at the zenith of the possibilities of 
youth. He was saved from the misinterpretation of the years and 
from the disappointments and the misconceptions of the evil to come. 
Neither mental nor physical decrepitude was to be his. Of him 
and of all the great souls of the South, in whom the North rejoices 
as in a precious national possession, it can be said: 



84 The Conference for Education. 

While 'round the sun old Mother Earth 

Pursues the ever fleeting years, 
A nation shall recount their worth 

With mingled pride and joy and tears. 

Fello iv-citizens, let us remember the oneness of our American 
derivation and destiny. Let us be thankful that in the baptism of 
blood all serious causes of division and reproach were purified away. 
Let us be grateful for the years of peace through progress and of 
progress through peace. Let us hail them as but the prelude of still 
better days to come. From this tableland of time, looking back- 
ward on the past and forward on the future, let us strike hands for 
the betterment of politics ; for the cleansing of rule ; for the moral 
trusteeship of private wealth and of public office ; for the lifting of 
poverty, through self-help, into comfort ; for the considerate leader- 
ship of ignorance into knowledge; for the transmutation of pro- 
vincialism into patriotism and of patriotism into philanthropy. In 
this work, while our country is our solicitude, let our field be the 
world. While our countrymen are our preference, let humanity 
be our client. By recasting ourselves on the lines of God's laws in 
our hearts, our state shall prosper, our cities shall come to honor, 
our communities shall conquer the pinnacles of material and of 
moral achievement, and our nation shall attain to the benign pur- 
poses of Deity in its discovery and in its development. And from 
the vantage ground of this republic will sweep streams of blessings 
to all the race of man. If to this we here dedicate and here conse- 
crate ourselves, the North of our homes and the South of your 
hearts, the North and the South of our country, will eventually be 
constrained to admit that we fought well and sought well and 
thought well and wrought well for their behoof and for our own. 
(Prolonged applause.) 

The Conference then took a recess until 3.30 o'clock p. m. 



George H. Hulvey. 85 



AFTERNOON SESSION. 

Thursday, April 23, 1903. 
The Conference was called to order at 3.30 o'clock p. m. 

The President: — Ladies and Gentlemen, During our exer- 
cises this afternoon, during which some very practical questions are 
to be treated, there is to be a general discussion after some opening 
addresses. The opening topic is " The Consolidation of Schools and 
Transportation of Pupils," the discussion is to be opened by Mr. 
George H. Hulvey, of Bridgewater, Va. 

The Consolidation of Schools and Transportation of Pupils 
By Mr. George H. Hulvey, of Bridgewater, Va. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: — I am especially happy 
to greet you as co-workers in the great field of education, and in the 
common elevation of our people. 

About the subject of consolidation of schools I can hardly hope 
to interest the city people, because they are not vitally concerned in 
it; they are not vitally concerned in it, because the subject of con- 
solidation has already been worked out for them in the city. But I 
have noticed in my visitation of schools that while the cities and 
large towns have admirable schools, our rural people are suffering. 

This matter of consolidation of schools seems to have been 
regarded in the last few years as a kind of fad. The fact is that I 
have been working on it for the last twenty years. I worked on it 
before it came before the people; and according to my observation, 
before the introduction of public schools such as we have to-day. 
Then I found that in our county, in the midst of these little cross- 
roads schools, we had a considerable number of classical schools. 
The public school system virtually choked out the classical schools 
and we saw that we must put something in their place. This neces- 
sitated in our county a great deal of earnest and hard work to 
organize what we call the graded system and to introduce the high 
school to take the place of our old classical schools that seemed to 
have passed away. I felt then, ladies and gentlemen, that it was a 
duty incumbent upon us absolutely to make a move in that direction. 



86 The Conference for Education. 

Another thing that led us along in the work of consolidation 
was the fact, which every experienced and skilled man in our 
country knows, that in all of these years we have accomplished com- 
paratively nothing with the little cross-roads school. I grew up in 
a strictly rural district, and when I was trying to get my education, 
before we had good country schools, I went around to our good 
people and said : " Neighbors, for about a dollar and a half a month 
per pupil, we can try and get a little better teacher." They said: 
" No, that is too much." So the result was that I was driven out of 
the neighborhood to get school facilities. If you go all over the 
school districts in the Old Dominion, you will find it true that many 
a young man who has gotten an education has been driven out of 
his own district and compelled to go where he could get better 
school facilities. 

With these facts before us, it behooves us to work along this 
line, and these things have been a constant stimulus to me in pushing 
along the work of consolidation. Before our people as a public took 
this up, I had gotten nearly one hundred of my pupils together in 
graded schools with a high school on top of them. Our graded 
schools number thirty out in my county, and we have in each from 
two to ten teachers. We are pushing right along under this system 
called " consolidation." We have been consolidating as far as we 
could without the transportation. This year we started for the first 
time two wagons in our county; they have done good service and 
have been entirely satisfactory as far as we know. We expect to 
start in another year quite a number more. 

Some of our school officers say to me : " Well, but our people 
are opposed to it ; our patrons are opposed to it, they are not taking 
to this system kindly." I say, ladies and gentlemen, that all that 
stands in our way to-day is getting the money to build large houses 
as fast as the people are making demand for them. 

Let me say to you, about the difficulty of getting the consent 
of our people, that if I go forth in this State of Virginia I see the 
old father and the old mother toiling away at their tasks. I say: 
" What are you doing all of this work for ? You are now old and 
you have enough to fall back on ; I can't see why you are pushing 
along and toiling." They tell me that they are working for their 
children. I see the old mother working about the household affairs, 



George H. Hulvey. 87 

and I ask her why she is working, and she says she is working for 
her children. These old people of Virginia are living for their chil- 
dren, and as I told the superintendents, we have nothing to do in 
this system of consolidation but to convince these people of the fact 
that we are going to give their children better school facilities. 
(Applause.) 

Then there is another point, to which I would like to call your 
special attention ; I think it almost useless to mention it to any good 
father or mother in this audience this evening. You know that at 
the age at which our children are driven away from the rural schools 
to get facilities for education, they are in that plastic, formative 
stage when you want to have daily supervision of your child. You 
say that you are going to send the children away to good, faithful, 
conscientious teachers. I admit that we have a number of them in 
this country, but I say there is no teacher on this earth, no friend 
in the world, that has the eager, longing interest in that child that 
you have. It is worth millions to us in a lifetime to have the little 
girl and the growing boy within the home circle. We are trying to 
accomplish that by consolidation and transportation. 

There may be a few districts in our county, I have no doubt 
that there are a few in almost every county, in which it is very diffi- 
cult to work this system. Our neighborhoods are sometimes cut 
asunder by mountains, sometimes by almost impassable streams, and 
we find it difficult to bring all sections together. I do not know 
whether we can effect it all over my county or not, but I tell you 
what I will do — I will plant one of these schools in every section of 
Rockingham County where it is practicable to do it ; and, if I must 
leave a few scattered little schools in the mountains on the outskirts 
of the county, it will only be a few. We are going to put up con- 
solidated schools in every neighborhood wherever we can get our 
people together. 

Coming down on the train a gentleman said : " If your schools 
are not as good as they should be, why not employ better teachers 
and make them better?" The trouble is not there; if it had been 
we could have obviated it long ago. The State of Ohio probabh 
spends more money on education that any state in the Union, and 
it said years ago : " We must have better teachers in our schools." 
They began to hunt classical teachers, they raised the salaries of their 
teachers, and they tried that system for several years. Finally they 



88 The Conference .for .Education. 

woke up to the fact that the fault was not in the teacher but in the 
miserable system. (Applause.) 

I want to illustrate to you, as I illustrate it to my people. I do 
not want any of my people to follow me when they don't know what 
they are doing. I was teaching school once and had a neighbor 
teaching within a mile or two of me; that was more than twenty 
years ago. I said : " George, do you know that I could put every 
pupil of your school into my school and not form a single new class 
and not make any class too large ?" He said : " Yes." I said : 
" That would give us exactly the advantage of one teacher, wouldn't 
it?" He said: " Yes." That is the argument for school consolida- 
tion. 

You can readily understand that a teacher's work has very 
little to do with the number of pupils, or, in other words, the number 
of pupils has very little to do with the teacher's work, but it is the 
number of things he has to teach. In our graded schools we have 
one school where one teacher has been teaching one hundred pupils 
for a number of years. They are not the teachers who are com- 
plaining, but you will find a country teacher that is teaching every- 
thing from A, B, C up to Latin and Greek, and he is the teacher 
who, like Joshua, is praying for the sun to stand still until he can 
get off one more bullet. (Applause.) 

We have in our Harrisonburg school ten teachers. We have 
two teachers there devoted to high school work, and if you take off 
the two top teachers in that school, the other eight are teaching 
almost identically the same things that are being taught in the little 
cross-roads schools with one teacher. Just think of a teacher stack- 
ing himself up against odds of eight to one. You cannot help seeing 
why he fails, and you cannot help seeing that the trouble is with the 
system and not with the teacher. 

With facts like these placed before the people, I have never 
seen any trouble in getting our people to take hold of the new 
system. 

I want to suggest another idea about consolidation, and that is 
that we cannot put up one of these large houses in every part of the 
county, but we must go into the most populous section of the county, 
we must go to a central point where we can bring four or five or 
six adjacent schools together, and there we run no risk of failure, 
and no risk of losing our money. But if the system is not watched, 



G. P. Glenn. 89 

large schoolhouses will be built in rural districts, and in one or two 
or three years the population will move away and the schoolhouse 
will be standing there without a tenant. I think it is the duty of 
every school officer, while watching over the interests of the children 
and watching over the educational interests of the fathers and 
mothers, also to look after the finances entrusted to his keeping. 
(Applause.) 

I have presented in brief form some of the needs for consolida- 
tion. The subject of transportation I can refer to only briefly. 
Wherever you leave a neighborhood or a community too far away 
from a schoolhouse, some of the money given for supporting these 
schools should be taken to buy a good class of wagons and good 
teams, and haul the little folks to the schoolhouse. This is no longer 
an experiment, there is no risk in it. Anyone can take Dr. Harris's 
statement in the report of the United States Commissioner of Edu- 
cation and see that it has been tried in eighteen states out of the 
forty-four, and the report shows that the pupils progress better, that 
the health of the pupils is better, and that we thus have nothing to 
risk in the way of experiment. 

The President : — The gavel was ' restrained, but the gavel 
needs a word of explanation. The chairman did not bring this gavel 
with him. He had one made in Athens last year, which will arrive, 
probably, to-morrow. This one was provided here, and there is a 
little silver plate on it with an inscription indicating that it is a gift 
to this Conference from the Richmond Educational Association. 

The discussion will be continued by Mr. G. P. Glenn, superin- 
tendent of schools, Jacksonville, Fla. 

The Concentration of Schools and Transportation of Pupils. 
By Mr. G. P. Glenn, Superintendent of Schools, Jacksonville, Florida. 

An up-to-date educational journal wisely suggests that the 
social philosophers who are seeking an explanation for the rush of 
the rural population to the city should turn their eyes upon the dis- 
trict school. It is undoubtedly one of the overlooked causes. 

Thousands of country people sell or rent their farms and go 
into town in order to give their children educational advantages 
which they cannot have in the country schools as they are at present 
conducted. 



go The Conference for Education. 

The pronounced educational advantages of the city are irre- 
sistibly attractive to the enterprising American, who always believes 
in the efficacy of education. If the schools of the city are to remain 
so incomparably better than those of the country, the exodus of the 
farmers to the city will continue. 

A generation ago this incomparable difference did not exist, 
neither did there then exist a well-developed art of teaching, such as 
we see applied in our city schools to-day, but not in our rural schools. 
This is a second incomparable difference quite adequate to cause 
the first. 

As a verification of this cause, we find the art of learning very 
generally well developed among pupils of city schools, while it is 
displayed in rural schools by only a few — a few mental giants of 
whom Cicero, in his comments on the genius of nature and the 
genius of industry, says : " Something marvelous may be expected 
from the youth who has both." These rare combinations of genius, 
in the past, have performed the wonderful feat of capturing the art 
of learning, despite the adverse conditions of the rural school. 
Unfortunately, they do not represent the masses of country school- 
children. Dr. Hinsdale says : " One of the most valuable arts 
that a boy or girl, a young man or young woman, can learn is the 
art of study." Jefferson Davis, in a letter to a Mississippi teacher, 
has incidentally left us the following excellently worded pedagogic 
thought: "The art of learning and the endowment to teach must 
both be developed in youth." 

From these thoughts one may correctly infer that every nor- 
mally constituted child, every youth or maiden, is gifted with the 
endowment to study, the inherent ability to learn; also, that such 
endowment must be developed into an art during the period of 
youth, or lie dormant for life. 

If then we note correctly that this all-important art of study 
or art of learning is quite apparent among pupils of the city school, 
but generally dormant among pupils of rural schools, we have dis- 
covered adequate cause for the incomparable excellence of the city 
school, and we who have charge of rural education should hasten 
to engraft that cause into the country schools with all possible 
speed. 

As we have already implied that the development of the pupil's 
art of learning is a direct product of the teacher's art of teaching. 



G. P. Glenn. 91 

it might seem to follow that the rural teacher has been blamable for 
the inferiority of the country school. Such a conclusion would be 
false. But the one man who is specially at fault in this matter is the 
county superintendent. He should long ago have been discerning 
enough to discover that the application and the very existence of the 
art of teaching has been possible in the city school, because of its 
peculiar organization, and impossible in the rural school because of 
its peculiar lack of organization. He ought to have had the pro- 
fessional sagacity to note that this lack of organization was due to 
his own delinquency. Added to such discernment and sagacity, he 
should have had force of character sufficient to abandon the old 
rural system for something better. If his Board of Public Instruc- 
tion may have opposed his efforts in the past, he may now say to 
them that the State Department of Politics is about to outstrip his 
department of education, in the fact that he has young electors grow- 
ing up who cannot vote the Australian ballot in five minutes, and in 
the paramount fact that he has many young electors, and more to 
follow, who have not acquired sufficient art of learning to get 
knowledge from the printed pages of current political literature, to 
the end that they may intelligently cast their ballots for the nomina- 
tion of all candidates for office, from governor down to constable, 
at the coming election. 

During the last decade nearly all the Northern states, from 
Maine and Massachusetts through to Minnesota, have adopted, to 
some extent, the plan of centralizing rural schools as a means of 
improving them. 

Massachusetts was the pioneer by many years and has very 
definite legislation upon the subject. Pennsylvania newspapers are 
filled with enthusiasm over the prospect of an early state manage- 
ment of the new system. Ohio has long since carried her Kings- 
ville centralized school far beyond the pale of experiment, and has 
brought it into national repute. Indiana and Illinois superin- 
tendents are making pilgrimages to Ohio's Mecca, the school at 
Kingsville, to inspect its mode of operating, while Wisconsin and 
Mississippi and North Carolina write to Florida seeking Duval 
County's experience and method of transportation, connected with 
her centralization of rural schools during the last six years. Duval 
modestly replies that the dawn of the twentieth century finds her 
well advanced in the execution of the greatest educational reform 



92 The Conference for Education. 

likely to be accomplished in this nation before that century ends. 
In this county six years ago there were forty-five rural schools 
of one teacher each, for white children, established by former admin- 
istrations. The work of these schools was so unsatisfactory in 
general, and the per capita of expense ran so high in many of them, 
that the present administration determined to reduce the number 
to fifteen schools of three teachers each. 

A statutory clause of the state provides that school children 
must not be required to walk to school more than one mile and a 
half. Hence, in choosing the sites for the centralized schools, the 
one having the greatest number of children within a radius of one 
mile and a half has generally been chosen. Seven of these schools 
are now in operation, each accommodating the children of about 
sixty to one hundred square miles of territory. Others will be estab- 
lished as rapidly as funds will permit. 

The concentration of the children who live more than one mile 
and a half from these new schools is accomplished by means of 
wagonettes, specially designed for the purpose, and provided by 
the Board of Public Instruction at the public expense. They are of 
such a capacity as to carry eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, 
eighteen and twenty pupils, respectively, and cost from seventy to 
one hundred dollars each. Last year twenty-seven of these comfort- 
able vehicles were running at an average cost of $23.33 i"3- These 
twenty-seven conveyances enabled us to close twenty-four of the 
old one-teacher schools, the current cost of which had previously 
been forty-five dollars and fifty cents per month for each. Hence, 
our transportation system now in operation produces a current sav- 
ing of four hundred and sixty-two dollars per month over the old 
method. This gross saving was reduced by two hundred and twenty- 
five dollars, the increase in salaries for assistant teachers at the 
centralized schools, and there was still left a net saving of . two 
hundred and thirty-seven dollars per month. During a single term 
of eight months this net saving amounts almost to the entire cost 
of the twenty-seven wagons, and, since the life of a well-made wagon 
is about five years, four-fifths of this saving can be devoted to the 
extension of the new system and to better facilities for teaching. 
Therefore, even in a financial way, centralization in Duval County, 
Florida, is a decided success. (Applause.) 



G. P. Glenn. 93 

Professionally there seems to be nothing objectionable, and of 
the many advantages the following are the more important: 

1. The teachers' work is so well organized that the average 
recitation period is doubled. 

2. The effort of the teacher is made more effective by means of 
a more adequate equipment. 

3. Truancy is wholly eliminated. The health of the pupils is 
preserved against bad weather and worse roads, but especially from 
the impure drinking water of former days. 

4. Many children, formerly so isolated as never to have access 
to any school, are now accommodated, to the advantage of the 
system financially. 

5. Local prejudice and family feuds are so completely sub- 
merged that one or two large families cannot freeze out the teacher. 

6. As a sequence to all these favorable conditions, the average 
attendance is increased 12 1-2 per cent, giving a corresponding 
increase of school funds from the state. 

7. The country maiden may, and does, continue her education, 
even into the appreciative days of womanhood, without fear of 
molestation by the ubiquitous tramp or other vagabond. 

8. The youth prolongs his school days to the ambitious verg- 
ing into manhood, because his aspirations for intellectual progress 
have been encouraged — he has been given time and opportunity to 
think and to talk. 

9. The farmer and his family are becoming more content with 
their independent, self-sustaining occupation, preferring to have 
their children educated in these efficient rural schools, where, during 
the character-forming period of youth, ethical culture is free from 
the dissipations of social life as manifested in our cities. 

10. The development of the art of teaching by young aspirants 
is more feasible to the superintendent. His efforts at supervision 
are more frequent and more effective. On his rounds of duty, and 
at sight of the old, abandoned schoolhouses, he thinks of Whittier's 
lines : 

" Still sits the schoolhouse by the road, 
A ragged beggar sunning." 

Simply sunning, each a moss-covered monument, befitting the 
raggedest, most beggarly system of rural education ever devised by 



94 The Conference for Education. 

man, and an appropriate epitaph on each would be, " Now departed, 
but not lamented." 

The President : — According to the letter of our program, this 
subject of consolidation of schools and transportation of pupils is 
open for discussion. I am going to take the liberty, in the interest 
of the Conference, to request one or two gentlemen to make speeches 
about this matter. They have had no knowledge of the request, but 
in my knowledge of the gentlemen, I believe they would hesitate to 
take the floor, if they had known. First I want to ask Superinten- 
dent W. W. Stetson, who comes to us from the most extreme South- 
ern state — I mean Maine. ( Laughter. ) He is on the platform with 
us, a member of the Conference and a guest of the City of Richmond, 
and I think I should be lacking in my duty to the subject and the 
occasion if I failed to indicate to Mr. Stetson the propriety and the 
necessity of his arising to take a perfectly voluntary part in the dis- 
cussion of this question. (Applause.) 

Mr. Stetson : — Ladies and Gentlemen, The homes of this 
country are domestic universities. The common schools must become 
the social, literary and art centres of the communities in which they 
are found. The safety of the nation is not in the hands of its rulers, 
but in the lives of its common people. (Applause.) The world's 
best servant is he who knows the past, lives in the present, foresees 
the future, and is ready for the next thing. (Applause.) And the 
next thing is the consolidation of the common schools. (Applause.) 

There are three questions to be considered in this connection: 
First, is it worth doing ; second, how is it to be done ; and, third, what 
results may we expect therefrom? 

The first and the last do not need discussion. To the second I 
wish to address myself. 

It was an English clergyman who said, "Never explain, never 
apologize, never retract, get the thing done and let them howl." 
(Laughter and applause.) Much mischief is wrought through an 
undue use of the lower jaw and vocal chords. (Applause.) Experi- 
ence with country people has taught me that the surest way of secur- 
ing their opposition is to attempt to talk schemes into them. Success 
is assured if you can get them to talk them over with you. The 
ideas, plans, outlines and details must seem to come from them. 



IV. W. Stetson. 95 

The best instructor induces his pupils to say vastly wiser things than 
he ever dreamed of. (Laughter and applause.) 

You and I are of a very wise order of beings; we are of a 
superior class; we know it and are quite willing that other people 
should be familiar with this interesting fact. These common people, 
living in quiet valleys and on sunny hillsides, know some things it 
would be better if we knew more about. 

It is a part of my business to keep a certain portion of the state 
machinery so well greased that the creaking will not be heard in 
Augusta, where the governor lives who makes certain appointments. 
In the performance of my duties, I had to go into a distant and 
wilderness section of the state sometime since. I made the journey 
hoping I might settle a quarrel. There were several people present 
at the hearing who knew but little about the matter in controversy. 
They occupied so much time in telling what they didn't know that I 
missed my train and had to remain over until the next day. I went 
to the nearest village, found the hotel, and seated myself on the 
veranda. Just across the way was the finest embodiment I have yet 
seen of Uncle Sam. He was tall, lank and lean; his trousers were 
too short for the man who was wearing them ; his coat pinched up 
under his arms ; his hat had served several generations at the front ; 
he had a tuft of whiskers on his chin ; he had keen, clear eyes, and 
he expectorated a brown fluid some yards across the street at regular 
intervals. After studying the situation for some minutes he came 
over and sat beside me. In less than a minute I discovered he was 
a Maine Yankee, — he wanted to know my name and what I was up 
there for. I wasn't in a frame of mind to give him the desired infor- 
mation, and finally he turned abruptly upon me and said: "Who in 
thunder are you anyway ?" The tone and phrase brought the desired 
answer. It was interesting to see him straighten out, as he said: 
"Have you been over to our schoolhouse ?" I said "No." And he 
said, "You'd better not go." I asked why, and he said, "They spent 
$150 on the outside and $15 on the inside, and it is neither fit for a 
bird cage nor a dog kennel." We fell to talking about school grounds 
and buildings. Among other things he said : " The school grounds 
should be three acres in area" — and then the state superintendent 
began to uncurl and straighten out; he had never dared to ask for 
more than an acre — " I would plant forest trees in one oortion of the 



q6 The Conference for Education. 

lot. Near them I would have a fruit orchard and vegetable garden, 
with flower beds at suitable intervals." 

In speaking of the space in front of the school building he 
seemed to be somewhat skittish of the word " lawn," or else was not 
familiar with it, and spoke of it as a " piece of ground" which should 
be suitably graded and beautified with trees and flower beds. He 
located the outbuildings in the rear corners of the lot, and surrounded 
them with evergreens, so that they would not be in sight of the 
children while at play. 

In speaking of the house, he said he would have an unpreten- 
tious wooden building, painted white, with green blinds. The colors 
were characteristic of his Yankee ancestry. I was much surprised 
when he said that the interior should be tinted in soft shades, which 
are restful and attractive to the eye. He did not say he would put 
reproductions of the Great Masters on the walls; but he did say, 
" I would put up some pictures for the children to look at and study." 
He also said he would have a bookcase with a few good books in it, 
but he would not have many ; he believed in the best, and he believed 
in reading them many times. 

It seemed to me he was striking a very swift pace — something 
faster than a 2.04% clip, but later I discovered he was scoring for 
position — if you know what that means ; I don't. 

In his next statements came my greatest surprise. He said, " I 
would build a small room in the rear and at one side of the school- 
house, and in it I would put lumber and tools, and give the boys a 
chance to make things. At the other corner I would build a small 
house for the girls, and furnish them with such material and help 
as would enable them to learn how to cook and sew." 

When he had reached this point, I was constrained to ask, " My 
friend, where did you study pedagogy ?" He replied, " What in hell 
is that?" (Laughter and applause.) There was not a hint of pro- 
fanity in his reply. The most pious could not object to the spirit of 
the sentence. 

After a study of school questions extending through a third of 
a century and in two continents, I am prepared to say that my Aroos- 
took friend, who was born in a wilderness township, and had never 
been outside of the county in which he lived, is the man who has 
given me the most satisfactory statement of what school grounds, 
school buildings, school furnishings, school teaching, should be. In 



J. B. Hawthorne. 97 

his discussion of the matter he went into the details with great care 
and marked intelHgence. He insisted that the preparing of the 
grounds, the planting of the trees, shrubs, vegetables, etc., should 
be done by the parents, children and teacher, and that these things 
should be done a little at a time. He urged that the spirit developed, 
the sense of responsibility cultivated, and the civic pride engendered 
would be the best results coming from such efforts. 

He taught me these two great lessons : Have confidence in the 
common people, and, second, work with them in doing the things 
which need to be done to give them better physical surroundings, the 
best books, art in the schoolroom. The home and the school hold 
the hope of the future; this is my benediction. (Long applause.) 

The President: — The Rev. Dr. Hawthorne, of this city, has 
been suggested as one who will say a few words to us at this time. 

Dr. J. B. Hawthorne, of Richmond: — Mr. President, your 
invitation is a great surprise to me. I had not the slightest sus- 
picion, when I came in the building a few moments ago, that I should 
be called upon to say anything, and I do not know that I have a 
thought that is worthy of the attention of this great convocation of 
educators. 

I believe it was Sydney Smith who said : " Be what God intended 
you for and you will succeed ; be anything else and you will be worse 
than nothing." I believe it requires more than training and 
knowledge of the science of pedagogy for a man to be a successful 
teacher, either in a primary school or in a college. He must have 
a natural aptitude for the work, and I believe the latter accounts 
for a great deal of failure that we have in our educational life, 
especially in the South, for I know more about that than I do about 
any other region. 

If you are called to the great work of teaching, and you have 
the requisite training for it, and the aptitude, the natural gifts, for it, 
you will succeed. If you have not such aptitude, it is as fixed as 
fate that you will fail. And then I think that a teacher ought to 
have convictions, he ought to have established, fixed views about 
some things. 

The first public school-teacher that I remember was an old 
man in Wilcox County, southern Alabama, whose name was 
Thomas Bayne. I have not time to tell you about what our public 
7 



^8 The Conference for Education. 

school system in those ante-bellum days was in that country ; but this 
old man Bayne, who had taught the children in my father's family 
their letters and how to spell in words of three or four syllables, 
made application for the position of public school-teacher in that 
district, and the county superintendent asked him a single question. 
He said : " Mr. Bayne, this community is very much divided on a 
question of geography ; some believe that the world is flat and some 
believe that it is round, and we would like to know what you pro- 
pose to teach on that subject." After some hesitation, the old man 
said : " Well, sir, on that question I have no very fixed views. I 
have prepared myself to teach either the round or the flat system, and 
therefore will accommodate the wishes of my patrons." I believe 
that a teacher should have some very deep and fixed convictions on 
some subjects, and I believe that right there is the secret of many 
a man's failure who is engaged in the public schools of our country. 

Mr. President, I want to say, before I take my seat, that noth- 
ing has pleased me more, nothing has given me more joy within 
the last year, nothing has brought so much instruction to me as the 
assembling of this great convention of educators in the city of 
Richmond. I honestly believe that this great movement promises 
more for our great country than anything that has occurred within 
the last fifty years. No words of reprobation are too severe for the 
political demagogues who are trying to divide it. (Applause.) 
All honor to those who bring an undivided mind and heart and 
strength to its support. It is a great and patriotic power. All I 
have time to say is, God bless this educational movement, and 
prosper the work which it has in hand. 

The President: — I now have the pleasure of presenting 
to the audience Professor P. P. Claxton, superintendent of the 
Summer School of the South, Knoxville, Tenn. Mr. Claxton is 
well known to all the members of the Southern Education Board 
for the earnestness and ability with which he has served the bureau 
of the board and with which he has prosecuted his work for the 
Summer School. It is therefore a pleasure to me to present him to 
this Conference. 



p. p. Claxton. 99 

Address — A Model School. 
By Professor P. P. Claxton, of Knoxville, Tennessee 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: — The gentleman from 
Maine made my speech much better than I can make it, putting it 
in fewer words than I can put it. The model country school, after 
all, is not so difficult a thing to realize if we consider a few prin- 
ciples of education which will give us an idea of what the country 
school should be like. We must remember that in all time it has 
been the purpose of education to prepare the pupils for the lives 
which they are to live. We must remember, also, that all education 
grows out of the life that the people really live. It is a selective 
process, it is a revising process. The law of the less of interest the 
less of growth, the rule of beginning where you are and going to 
where you must reach, hold in the country just as they do in the 
city. 

The time was when we took probably one boy out of ten and 
one girl out of fifteen or twenty, or more, and we expected these 
people to be professional men, or ladies and gentlemen of leisure; 
they were to be lawyers and statesmen and orators and literary 
gentlemen; they were to be possible leaders, they were to have to 
do in some way with talk, and we taught them for that purpose very 
largely, and so we had a fixed course. But the day has come when 
we are undertaking to educate the children of all the people for all 
the walks of life. We are beginning to try the great experiment of 
bringing intelligence and intellectuality and heart and spirit to all 
industry, to all the life that all the people must live. We are trying 
to answer that great prayer that Jesus prayed for His disciples — 
not to take them out of the world, but to make them a part of the 
world ; that each boy and girl may do with less labor the work their 
parents did, and that each man shall walk away from his daily task 
a free man ; that the man who turns the clod may himself be more 
than a clod and the man that beats the anvil may have a heart more 
sympathetic than his own iron. 

All people must be prepared for two things. First, they must 
be prepared for life. That is the great thing in educational machin- 
ery, it must give culture, that enlargement, that giving of the mind, 
that giving of the soul and the heart to the task, that bringing of 
each individuality into contact with the great human interests of the 

L.oi C. 



loo The Conference for Education. 

world. Without that, all life must be a failure. Whether the boy 
is to live in the country as a farmer, or in the city as a professional 
man, the one great profession of all men, and all women, is humanity. 
So every school, in the city or in the country, must remember to 
open its doors to humanity for the pupils in the schools, it must make 
of them men and women, it must bring them into contact with the 
great sources of inspiration, with the great literature, with the 
great heart of the world, with all that lifts up. 

The second thing to be remembered is that all people must 
make a living. The day has come when people do not live in honor 
when they live by the labor of some one else. Every person must 
in some way either make his or her own support or contribute to 
the good of the world. I have come to believe that a good long 
step towards honest living is the ability to make an honest living, 
and that an honest life grows easily out of the ability to work in 
such a way that your work will contribute to your support and the 
support of those dependent on you. One must bear one's own 
burden and do something towards bearing the common burden. 
We will learn some day that that is the true solution of the negro 
problem in the South, when each negro has some ambition to make 
his own living and do somethinsLmore ; then other phases of the race 
problem will rapidly get out of the way. 

With this in mind, what shall we do? The country school is 
for country children who know about country things, and who, if 
our civilization is to continue as it is in the South, must largely live 
in the country, though of course some of them will go to the city. 
For that reason the state will have to educate some of its own citizens 
in the country. 

The country school should have the Maine man's three acres of 
land. I think it ought to have more than that. I have to do with 
one where we have about twelve acres of land. There is a hill on 
which the schoolhouse is to be built, which slopes down to a pond. 
We are going to plant trees there and down at the pond we are going 
to plant water lilies. We are going to build a schoolhouse which 
will have six rooms about 24 by 36 feet, and in addition there will 
be a large assembly room, large enough to accommodate the people 
who will come there to any entertainment for the people of the dis- 
trict. There will be halls and cloak rooms in addition. It will be 
built in an artistic way. The ceilings will be thirteen feet high, 



p. p. Claxton. loi 

the rooms well lighted and well ventilated, and there will be water 
in it, pumped from a little spring down at the foot of a hill. It 
will be built of wood. I had a letter to-day saying that it could be 
built of stone if we had another $1,500; it is in a marble region; 
think of a marble schoolhouse ! 

There will be a house for the teacher. There ought to be 
teacherages in the country, as well as parsonages. (Applause.) 
The plans have been drawn for a house to cost about $1,750; it 
would cost about $3,000 in the city. It will be a good home for the 
teacher. To begin with, it will have the grounds around it laid out 
by our professor of horticulture in Tennessee. The principal of the 
school will be required to live in that house and keep it in such a 
way that the grounds and the house will be a model for the people 
about there. An orchard will be planted on the hill back of the 
schoolhouse, a strawberry bed will be made, and a vineyard, if not 
for the sake of the fruit, at least for the sake of showing how to care 
for it and how to support it and how to pick off a few grapes so 
that the remainder will grow larger and be better than if all were 
allowed to remain on the vine. We shall attempt not to make any 
experiments, but to show what has been done in other places. We 
shall require the principal to see that it shall be demonstrated to 
the farmers what has been done by the most advanced knowledge 
in raising grapes in that section. 

The course of study in a country school should be broad. I 
believe in the freest kind of election. All children should be taught 
to read, to write, to spell, something of language and something 
of culture from the human side. I suppose geography is in that 
list, the connection between the dead sciences and the live sciences, 
if I may call them such for the moment, and history and literature. 
Through that course of study there will be a reading lesson every 
day. Children will be taught to read in a year or two, and then 
they will read for the sake of the matter. It will be the great 
literature of the world, that ought to be the common heritage of all 
the people — great because it takes hold of the human heritage of 
the heart. Then there will be a laboratory for chemistry and 
physics . ( Applause. ) 

Some years ago I had the opportunity of studying the schools 
of Liverpool. I learned there the great lesson that little children 
twelve to fifteen years old may begin in a laboratory, with apparatus 



I02 The Conference for Education. 

that costs very little, to learn the great fundamental principles of 
physics and chemistry. That knowledge one must have in modern 
life to understand the things about him. The laboratory is not for 
everybody, but certainly for those who go into the higher grades. 

There will be a shop in this school where boys can learn to do 
with hammer and plane the things necessary on a farm, and the girls 
will be taught to cook and sew. 

I believe everybody believes now, except a very few people, 
that the school must take hold on life ; that if the girls in the country 
must take hold of that which is provided by their fathers and brothers 
and husbands, and use a fractional part of it and sell what remains 
to the world and put the money in the bank, then there is the oppor- 
tunity for education to serve our country people. 

Next comes the question of the teacher. If the people of the 
South solve the question of the teacher, all other questions will be 
solved. The Germans say, " As is the teacher, so is his school." 
The Swedes go further and say, " The teacher is the school." If 
we had in our Southern country nothing but bright, thinking men 
and women for teachers, we would have everything all right. We 
shall try to get the proper kind of teachers in those schools. Why 
should all teachers have the same examination? Let us find a man 
who can teach horticulture, a woman who can teach cooking and 
sewing. It makes no difference if she doesn't know what is the 
longest river in the world — she is teaching sewing. (Applause.) 

We want somebody who can teach vocal music. The most 
practical thing, in city or country, after reading and writing, is the 
power to sing. I can be reasonably happy if I cannot translate 
American money into Russian kopecks, but I could not be happy 
if I could not sing at churches and Sunday schools. We want some 
one to teach the children how to sing; and if she does not know 
percentage quite well but can teach singing, I should say we need 
her for that school. In other words, we need six teachers for that 
school, for from two hundred and fifty to three hundred children 
live in a mile and a half of that school, and it hurts no child to walk 
that far. 

I understand the difficulty of making any new thing a success, 
but these things are not very difficult, and the scheme ought to suc- 
ceed. I know it will take time to work it out. I have given you, in 
the simplest language I could employ, the principles underlying the 



Robert B. Fulton. 103 

structure and purpose of this model school. I thank you for your 
attention. (Applause.) 

The Conference then took a recess until eight o'clock p. m. 



EVENING SESSION. 

Thursday, April 23, 1903. 

The Conference was called to order at eight o'clock p. m. 

The President : — Our proceedings this evening begin, accord- 
ing to the program, with an address from the Hon. H. L. Whitfield, 
state superintendent of public education for Mississippi, concerning 
" A Decade of Educational Progress in Mississippi." Because of 
illness in his household Mr. Whitfield has been detained. 

[At this point in this report the following paper is included 
as a post facto discussion of the topic assigned to Superintendent 
Whitfield. This paper was prepared for the present volume by Dr. 
Robert B. Fulton, chancellor of the University of Mississippi.] 

Educational Progress in Mississippi. 

Dr. Fulton : — In order to understand fully whatever of educa- 
tional progress has been made in Mississippi during the last fifteen 
years, conditions which existed previous to that time should be kept 
in mind. In the ante-bellum days the state had no public educational 
system. The lands granted by Congress in aid of public schools, 
amounting to one section in each township or about one-thirty-sixth 
part of all the lands in the state, had yielded no large fund for 
the support of education. Other funds for education were quite 
small. The state had been rapidly settled by immigration from 
the Southern states lying east of it, and the settlers were usually 
men of means. The per capita distribution of wealth among the 
whites in Mississippi immediately before the Civil War was large. 
Agricultural labor in the producton of cotton was very remunerative. 
Schools of course existed only for the whites, and under private or 
church or community control. Such schools multiplied, and many 
of them did large and effective work. There was a general senti- 
ment, founded upon individual independence and pride, which 
in the eyes of the public made it rather unseemly for any parent 



I04 The Conference for Education. 

to depend upon the state for assistance in the education of his 
children. 

The Civil War entirely changed these conditions. During the 
period of reconstruction some effort was made to organize a public 
school system. This was intended to afford equal opportunities to 
whites and blacks. Like many measures inaugurated in that period 
it incurred the odium of the tax-paying white people, and for many 
years little progress was made. 

In the year 1890, under the administration of Hon. J. R. Pres- 
ton, state superintendent of education, the first well marked effort 
was made to put life and vigor into the public educational system of 
the state. Superintendent Preston was instrumental in securing 
such legislation as required the examination of teachers applying 
for license by the state superintendent of education instead of under 
the direction of the county superintendents. The first examinations 
held in accordance with this policy showed the deficiencies of many 
teachers. Some were discouraged, others were stimulated. At that 
time the state was receiving no help from the Peabody Education 
Fund, and there was no organized work maintained by the state in 
any school for the training of white teachers. In the fall of 1892 
the faculty at the University, upon the suggestion of the chan- 
cellor, agreed to give at the University during the following summer 
courses which would be helpful to teachers in the public schools. 
Correspondence with the county superintendents of education had 
shown that between three and four hundred white teachers would 
probably be inclined to take advantage of such opportunity. The 
plan was proposed at the State Teachers' Association held in Jack- 
son in December, 1892. At that time departments of pedagogy 
in state universities were coming into favor and the association 
placed on record its expression of approval for such department. In 
the month of January, following, Superintendent Preston secured 
from the secretary of the Peabody Education Fund, Dr. J. L. M. 
Curry, an appropriation sufficient to maintain one or two summer 
institutes for teachers in the State of Mississippi. One of these held 
at the University in the summer of 1893, brought together a con- 
course of four hundred and fifty teachers from the public schools, 
most of whom were sadly conscious of their own deficiencies. This 
was by far the largest assemblage of Mississippi teachers which had 
ever met. The mutual acquaintances and the stimulus derived from 



Robert B. Fulton. 105 

the lectures of prominent educators from various parts of the coun- 
try gave great impetus in the right direction, and the work was 
most valuable, not only for what was accomplished, but more for 
what was projected. This was the beginning of the series of sum- 
mer meetings at the University and elsewhere which has continued 
up to the present time, and with increasing interest and profit to the 
individual workers in the public schools as well as to education 
generally in the state. The last of these gatherings held at the 
University in June and July, 1903, was attended by more than seven 
hundred and fifty teachers, earnest in their desire for knowledge, 
skill, and increased efficiency in their work. The institution of state 
examination for license to teach has been undoubtedly of the greatest 
value in stimulating teachers and in securing better efficiency in 
their work, as well as the higher appreciation of their work by the 
public. 

Another feature of far-reaching importance inaugurated during 
the administration of Superintendent Preston was the law author- 
izing the formation of separate school districts. In accordance with 
this law over seventy-five communities in the state were soon organ- 
ized into separate districts, in which, by local taxation, excellent 
school buildings were erected, and provision made for the main- 
tenance of well graded schools for a period of at least eight months 
in each year. These schools have in almost every case made rapid 
progress in the excellence of their work, and have won the fullest 
confidence and the cordial support of the local community. Many 
of them have developed good high school departments. All of them 
have drawn pupils from the surrounding rural districts, especially 
in their advanced grades. While these schools in the separate school 
districts do not reach more than 15 or 20 per cent of all the children 
of school age in the state, yet their success has been so marked that 
they have been a striking object lesson to other communities where 
conditions are not so favorable. 

It should be borne in mind that in the State of Mississippi there 
are separate schools for whites and for negroes. The negro public 
schools are taught entirely by negro teachers. In the separate school 
districts and in the rural school districts the schools are maintained 
during terms of equal length for the two races. 

In the year 1893, during the meeting of the teachers held at the 
University, a committee of ten was appointed to draft a model scheme 



io6 The Conference for Education. 

for grading the better schools of the state and marking out for them 
and for high schools courses leading from the primary classes up 
to the freshman classes of the State University. A scheme was 
adopted, upon the report of this committee, by formal action of the 
State Teachers' Association. This was published and has served 
as a model for the shaping of probably every graded school in the 
state. Previous to its adoption every teacher followed his own 
devices in the matter. 

In the years 1892 and 1893 the authorities of the State Univer- 
sity and the administrators of the public school system reached a 
definite understanding in regard to the relationship between the 
State University and the public school system by which the Univer- 
sity and all other public schools were recognized as parts of one 
general system. Since that period the policy outlined by Mr. Jeffer- 
son for public education in Virginia, and first exemplified fully in 
the public school system of the Northwestern states, has been prac- 
tically controlling in Mississippi. There has been the heartiest 
co-operation between the schools of all grades and the State Univer- 
sity. Many of the graduates of the University have gone into the 
public school work, and many communities look to the University 
to supply them with efficient teachers. 

The constitution of the state which has been in force since 1892 
requires of every voter an educational qualification before he can 
exercise an elective franchise. It also requires that the legislature 
by general taxation provide sufficient funds to maintain the public 
schools for at least four months in each year, which funds shall be 
distributed to the several counties in proportion to the number of 
educable children. It also allows each separate school district to 
levy taxes within a reasonable limit to supplement the appropriation 
made by the state and to continue its school for a full session of 
nine months, and allows the several counties to make a supplemental 
levy sufficient to maintain public schools in the county for a period 
altogether of nine months in each year. 

Whatever of advancement Mississippi has made in public edu- 
cation within the last ten years must be largely attributed to the 
legislation to which reference has been made. It is undoubtedly 
true that the requirement that a voter shall be able to read has 
placed a premium upon education, and that the silent working of 
this constitutional provision in the public mind has been wholesome. 



Robert B. Fulton. 107 

The separate school district law has given the opportunity for the 
development of good schools in the most favored localities. While 
it may have detracted something at first from the means of support 
of the rural schools in those counties where the separate school dis- 
tricts were maintained, yet upon the whole the establishment of 
good schools in the seventy-five or more separate school districts has 
undoubtedly afforded an object lesson of the greatest value to the 
neighboring rural districts. These, within the last five years, have 
felt very largely the stimulating effect of these object lessons. 
The legislation which allows the counties to make a special levy to 
maintain all the schools in the county for a longer peribd than four 
months has also been most wholesome. Nearly ten years ago 
County Superintendent Regan of Claiborne County, through his 
personal exertions, secured such a levy in his county as has main- 
tained all the schools in the county for a period of eight or nine 
months each year. Other counties, amounting in number now to 
fully fifteen, have been induced to follow this example. Under the 
aggressive administration of Superintendent Whitfield the work of 
lengthening the school term of the rural school by securing an addi- 
tional tax levy in the counties has made rapid progress, and the end 
of the year 1903 will probably show that as many as thirty counties 
in the state have adopted this policy. It thus appears that the 
example set by the establishment of good schools in the separate 
school districts has accomplished vastly more for the rural schools 
than would have been accomplished if the funds used in the separate 
school districts had been equally distributed over the counties. 

The school boards in the separate school districts are generally 
willing and anxious to provide every facility needed for improving 
the efficiency of these schools and for advancing the grade of 
instruction offered. It is worthy of note that never in the history 
of the state has there been such a large demand for thoroughly 
prepared and efficient teachers for the advanced grades and the high 
school departments of these schools as has been felt in the year 
1903. These high schools are so distributed over the state as that 
no ambitious boy or girl need be deprived of a high school training. 
The larger and more complete development of these high schools is 
now one of the matters most urgently calling for attention in Mis- 
sissippi. For this work competent high school teachers are in great 
demand. In order to meet these conditions the State Universitv has 



io8 The Conference for Education. 

arranged to expand its chair of pedagogy into a department of edu- 
cation. This department has been fully organized and will begin 
its work at the opening of the next session in September, 1903. 

The advancement which has been made in the state in the last 
decade was strikingly evidenced by the very large number of teachers 
attending the Summer School of the University in 1903. As com- 
pared with those who attended in 1893 their numbers were twice 
as great and the evidenced proficiency largely more than thrice as 
great. The enthusiasm and intelligent interest in their work is a 
most hopeful prophecy for the rapid advancement for all work done 
in the public schools in Mississippi. The outlook is most encour- 
aging in that it shows : 

1. That the high school departments of the schools organized 
in the separate school districts are rapidly developing in efficiency 
and thoroughness, and are now placing opportunities for high school 
training in every county in the state and within reach of practically 
all the youth of the state. 

2. That county taxation is rapidly solving the question of afford- 
ing longer terms and better facilities for rural schools. 

3. That the existence of good schools in the separate school dis- 
tricts has brought about a proper appreciation of good school work, 
and a larger demand for well trained and efficient teachers in the 
high schools as well as in the schools of lower grade, and a better 
appreciation of the fact that efficient teachers deserve adequate com- 
pensation for their services. 

All that has been said above relates specially to schools for 
whites. While there are corresponding schools for negroes in the 
separate school districts, it should be remembered that social condi- 
tions have led to the employment of negro teachers exclusively in 
the negro schools, that we have been offering to the negro race iden- 
tically the same form and method of instruction, with the use of the 
same text-books and facilities, which have been worked out for 
white children, and that we have tacitly been assuming that an edu- 
cation fitted for the Anglo-Saxon is that which should be offered 
to the negro children. 

As a result of the prevailing conditions the advancement in 
education made by the negro race in Mississippi has not been as 
marked as that shown by the white race. It is probably true that in 
the elementary grades the negro child learns to read and learn the 



L. H. Bailey. 109 

first rudiments as readily as the white child. Whether from racial 
or other conditions their work and advancement in the higher grades 
is not as largely successful in accomplishing desired results. 

The public educational work which has been done for the negro 
race in Mississippi has been chiefly paid for by white taxpayers. 
This has been tacitly allowed as a matter of benevolence, and public 
policy rather than wise pedagogical discrimination has controlled 
public sentiment. One great problem of the future will be to deter- 
mine what racial differentiation in the mode of education should be 
made for the negro race in view of his racial peculiarities and his 
social condition and family life. The fact that 60 per cent of the 
population of Mississippi belongs to this race gives special interest 
here to this question. Undoubtedly more of moral and parental 
training is needed for this race. Industrial training of various kinds 
may help to a successful solution of the problem as to what educa- 
tional facilities are most helpful to the negro race in Mississippi. 
The lack of proper home influences seems to be the most serious 
desideratum. 

The President: — We will now hear from Dr. L. H. Bailey, 
who tells me that the subject announced for him on the program, 
" The Forward Movement in Agriculture," would be more correctly 
stated as " Agricultural Education." I have now the privilege of 
presenting Dr. L. H. Bailey, professor in Cornell University. 

[Dr. Bailey has requested the substitution of the following for 
the address delivered in Richmond. The paper is one read before 
the Louisiana State University, and it is included here as especially 
appropriate to this volume.] 

Education Through Agriculture. 

By L. H. Bailey, LL.D., Professor of Agriculture in Cornell University. 

Professor L. H. Bailey : — It is a common saying that ours is a 
great country. We measure it by its miles and by its population. 
But I am most of all impressed by the diversity of its conditions and 
the differences of its institutions. The contrasts of this present 
journey are fresh in my mind. I began with New England, a 
country of green hills, of rippling, laughing streams, of small, snug 
and tidy homesteads, of reserve and conservatism in the ideals of 
its people. Stability is written on every line of its cities and its 



no The Conference for Education. 

landscapes. The sternness of its climate has bred a people in which 
there is no excess. The institutions of this old New England have 
been evolved with much experiment and tribulation. They have 
been the product o£ long and deliberate discussion, for the town- 
meeting has been the heart of its civilization, the forum in which 
every man has had an opportunity to express his full individuality. 

I crossed the great expanse of the Middle West. The showers 
of spring had awakened the sweeping landscape into the beauty of 
full foliage and flower. The bounding, rolling prairies stretched 
away to the rim of the sky. Everywhere the country is expressive 
of the fatness of the soil. Within a generation, a great civiliza- 
tion has sprung up, great cities have been built, institutions have 
been created and established. It is a region of full and bounding 
life and vigor. All its lines are direct and purposeful. It has not 
passed through those long periods of doubt and experiment that 
have characterized the old commonwealths. The school has been 
the pivotal point in its development. Great brick school edifices 
dominate the cities and the hamlets, as the cathedral buildings 
once dominated the villages of Europe. Nebraska is said to have 
the lowest percentage of illiteracy of any state in the Union. The 
result is that the Middle West is already beginning to color the 
political and economic ideals of the nation. The development of 
this great mid-continental region will be along large lines, for 
nature seems to have set no bounds. Yet, it was only yesterday 
that Bryant could say : 

" These are the gardens of the desert, these 
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, 
For which the speech of England has no name, — the prairies." 

Then I went by Oklahoma, with its vast and virgin reaches, 
and its farms in the luxuriance of their first reclamation from the 
wilderness. There is a newness and a freshness that challenge the 
citizen of the older commonwealths, and one wonders what great 
things the future may have in store for these untried countries. 
He only knows that there is promise. 

And finally I came to Louisiana, calm and lovely old state of 
the river and bayou and the sea. I left home in the burst of spring ; 
here I come into the full glory of the summertime. I experi- 
ence your ripe and genial climate. I see a new landscape and 
find a new set of institutions. Here are fine old families, with 



L. H. Bailey. iii 

noble traditions and high and chivalric ideals. Here is a type of 
civilization founded on social and economic conditions that are 
wholly unknown in New England and in Kansas. Here is a country 
as old as New England, as fertile as Iowa, as new as Oklahoma. 
Here flows the Nile and here lies the lower Egypt of the West. 
The commerce of the upper empire floats through your gates and 
you hold the keys thereof. The one overpowering thought as I go 
through your state is this : What undeveloped resources are here 1 
What great future awaits it! And all this material heritage is hal- 
lowed by a long and tender history and enriched by a sweet and 
virile literature. 

The overmastering impression that such a journey makes upon 
one is the feeling of diverseness alike in the physical features of the 
country and in the ideals and the institutions of the people. And 
yet we know that we are a common people, for we live under a 
common flag. The greatest hope in this great country lies in the 
fact that we all unite in the belief that every man shall have the 
full opportunity to make himself more of a man, while allowing 
every commonwealth to work out its own problems in its own way. 
Nothing would so soon destroy the very ideals of the republic as 
an effort to reduce all parts of the country to a uniformity of 
method. Evolution, whether in man or in institutions, is the work- 
ing out of individuality. Every man must have opportunity to 
make the most of himself. This is the one fundamental concept 
of our Western civilization. This is Americanism. This is democ- 
racy. It is the recognition of the effort and the personality of the 
individual. It gives the individual a chance. No conditions of 
birth or race or social status are to stand in any man's way. On 
the other hand, no man is to be forced into any factitious advan- 
tage. He is not to be given station or honor or opportunity beyond 
that which he is able to comprehend and to attain. To force a 
man beyond his sphere is as pernicious as to hinder him. The 
man must be given the opportunity to become what he has the ability 
to become. 

And in what does this opportunity consist? In political prefer- 
ment, which is the opportunity to hold a set and stated place in 
his community? No; for this preferment must rest upon the merit 
of the individual. It is a result, not a cause. In the opportunity 
to cast a vote? No; for he should cast a vote only when he is 



112 The Conference for Education. 

worthy to cast it. This is also a reward, not a cause. In some 
arbitrary social status that may be imposed either by custom or 
by statute? No; for social status rests, in the last analysis, only 
on the character of the individual. This also is a result, and not 
a cause. Yet, these things are said to constitute freedom ; but they 
are only the garments that freedom wears. There is only one 
freedom — the opportunity to emancipate oneself; and this oppor- 
tunity can be expressed by only one word in the English language — 
education. 

And what is education? The answer to this question is, to my 
mind, the crux of every social and economic and political question 
that torments us. Our different conceptions as to what education 
is, constitute, I believe, the greatest differences, in fact, the only 
fundamental differences, between the North and the South to-day. 
And I am free to say that I believe that the suggestion of the final 
answer to the question is now coming from neither the South nor 
the North, so much as from the West. It is a contrast of old ideals 
with the new. 

The full force of this contrast can be understood only as we 
pass in hasty review some of the older ideals of education. The 
history of the world has been a history of castes and classes. Gradu- 
ally and painfully the masses have challenged the classes, and 
have won recognition of rights that belong to all men when they 
win them. Education was first of the classes. It has been for the 
few. Chiefly, it has been ecclesiastic and aristocratic. Church 
schools and private schools were for centuries practically the only 
schools. The university and the college grew up in response to 
the demand of these special classes. Their doors were open to cer- 
tain men and to no women. These men were, for the most part, 
those who did not perform the world's labor. The world still looked 
to Greece for its ideals and its inspiration. The instruction in the 
institutions, therefore, followed Greek lines and it necessarily had 
little relation to the daily life. In fact, its divorcement from the 
daily life was really considered to constitute much of its merit, 
for thereby it stood for " ideals" and for " culture." This type of 
education, which is still adhered to in many places, is at best only 
a supplement to the daily living. It is essentially exotic; it is an 
engraftment and an acquirement. 

The history of education for the past two hundred years has 



L. H. Bailey. 113 

been a constant encroachment of those subjects that have relation 
to the daily life, and a continuous resistance on the part of the 
Greek ideals. Chemistry and natural philosophy fought their way 
in. Law and medicine were amongst the first of the new subjects 
to gain a foothold. Only a little more than a century ago " natural 
history" contended for admission to Harvard College and gained 
entrance only under protest. 

One by one the affairs of life have found expression in the 
schools. Little by little the schools have come to the people. The 
history of these ideas may be grouped around six or seven emphatic 
points. 

1. The evolution and fulfillment of the idea that it is the duty 
of the state to provide for education for all the people. This idea 
found full expression in the wise political philosophy of Jefferson, 
and embodiment in the ordinance of 1787, organizing the North- 
west Territory. It was Jefferson's conception that the state should 
provide for a public school system that should culminate in a univer- 
sity; but it is a significant fact that the part of his scheme that 
reached fulfillment was the university and not the elementary 
schools; and the grand old University of Charlottesville is one of 
the best of the many monuments to his fine genius. 

2. The rise of equal opportunity for women, to whom the 
public schools shall be opened as freely as to men. This develop- 
ment of educational ideals is not to be confounded with discussion 
of mere co-education, for co-education is only a means, and it may 
be desirable or undesirable, according to circumstances ; but it is 
the development of the emancipation of woman, giving her oppor- 
tunity. 

3. The gradual evolution of the idea that the state, in order 
to protect itself, must compel its children to attend school. The 
great growth of cities, with their hotbeds of crime and the inquisi- 
tion of child labor, has brought the whole subject of compulsory 
education to the fore. 

4. The enormous development of the scientific spirit in educa- 
tion. This is primarily the result of the growth of scientific inquiry, 
whereby we take nothing on authority, but everything on evidence. 
The growth of the spirit of science has challenged the accustomed 
means whereby men are educated. It has almost seemed as if the 
scientific and technical subjects were to drive out the ancient lan- 

8 



114 ^^^ Conference for Education. 

guage and literature and philosophy; but we know now that whilst 
the new has come to stay, the old has been revitalized and renewed, 
and that its efficiency as an educational means is to increase rather 
than diminish. Every subject now is studied by the scientific 
method. Witness the wonderful transformation in the writing and 
the teaching of history, whereby the methods of a generation ago 
already are outlived. Associated with language now is philosophy; 
with metaphysics is experimental psychology. The two elements in 
an educational system are, first, the result to be secured, and, second, 
the means of the process whereby that result is attained. The result 
is an educated man or woman, the drawn out and developed mind. 
The means may be varied, according to the circumstance. Under 
the power of a good teacher, a mind may be educated by means of 
any subject, whether that subject be associated with Greek, or 
philosophy, or cattle, or machinery, or mathematics, or cotton. 

5. The full development of the idea that education should be 
related in some way to the daily life. This is a necessary corollary 
of the growth of the belief in popular education ; for most persons 
must earn their living, the power to earn a living must be enhanced, 
the person must feel some inspiration, and some satisfaction in the 
life that he himself must live. Now, to relate education to the 
person himself is the meaning of the Land Grant Act of 1862, made 
in the darkest days of our beloved country, born of trouble and 
misfortune, but the culmination of long years of discussion whereby 
it was determined that education was really not in consonance with 
the daily lives of the common people. And what do the common 
people do? They engage in farming and in the mechanic arts. 
Then let us make farming and the mechanic arts mean more than 
they ever have meant before, to the end that the millions of persons 
who engage in them may lead fuller lives ! Your institution and 
mine, and every other one that receives the privileges of the Land 
Grant Act, — has it felt that the education that makes a people great 
is that which enables a man or a woman to rise to a higher plane, 
whilst still content with a work-a-day and perhaps an humble life? 
We have spoken much about the ideals of education, but the true 
philosophy of life is to idealize everything with which we have to do. 

Do I raise sugar-cane? Then let me know how sugar-cane 
grows. Let me analyze its complex structure, see its cells, unravel 
its fabric, follow the juices from the earth until, kissed by the sun 



L. H. Bailey. 115 

and blessed by the rain, they are full of their magic sweetness. Let 
me know the soil, whence it came and of what it is composed. Let 
me understand the thousand forces that I set at work when I break 
it with the plow. Let me study its chemical and physical changes. 
Let me see the myriads of micro-organisms that touch it into the 
breath of life. And as I follow the furrow, let me feel the kindly 
warmth of the sun on my cheek and catch the song of a bird as it 
flies over my head and is gone. Let me know all this about sugar- 
cane and I shall love the sugar-cane. And I will so improve my 
methods that I will revolutionize my sugar-making. 

There is just now an American invasion of Europe and of the 
uttermost parts of the world — a peaceful invasion of machinery 
and implements and invention. The older countries have become 
alarmed and have investigated to find the reasons why. There is 
fine unanimity in the answers ; the reason why is because we have so 
many educated men in the factories and in the shops. For years, 
the result of the experiment of teaching the mechanic arts was in 
doubt; but no man doubts it now. You can no more make pro- 
gressive machinery without educated and progressive men than you 
can decipher an inscription on a Greek temple without a quickened 
knowledge of Greek. But there are nearly two times more people 
engaged in agriculture than in the mechanic arts, and there are four 
times more fixed capital engaged in agriculture than in all the 
mechanic industries. What shall we do for agriculture? 

6. Finally, education has been seized of the missionary and 
altruistic spirit. We would not confine the influence of the col- 
lege or the university to those persons who have the means and 
desire to come up and sit in its influence. We would extend its 
influence; and thus has been born the extension movement which 
is so much a part of our time. By means of itinerant lecturers, 
publications, correspondence courses, we are spreading the elevating 
and fraternizing spirit of the universities. We believe that every 
man and woman should be touched with the new ambition and the 
new ideals that education can impart. We must carry the educa- 
tional motive to every man's door; if he shuts the door, we must 
throw it in at the window. 

I have now traced in a brief and very imperfect way some of 
the recent changes of base in the ideals of education. My conten- 
tion is that no subject is too mean or too common to serve in the 



ii6 The Conference for Education. 

process of educating a man, and that equal results can be attained 
■ — given equally good teachers — whether the subject-matter is a 
Greek poem or Indian corn. Each may be made the means of 
training a mind. 

But there is a larger side to all this, and hereby I come to the 
main purpose of my speech. I propose briefly to speak of agri- 
cultural education. This I do for three reasons: first, I know less 
— if it be possible for me to know less — about other kinds of edu- 
cation; second, the other phases of education are already fairly 
well developed and are not so much in need of a sponsor; third, 
because more persons are engaged in agriculture than in any other 
series of cognate occupations. More than 50 per cent of all our 
people live in the country, and about one-third of all our people 
are actual farmers. Of the people that live in Louisiana, 55 per 
cent of those that are gainfully employed are engaged in agricul- 
ture, notwithstanding the fact that the state contains one of the 
great cities of the Union. In Mississippi, 76 per cent of those that 
are engaged in earning a living are farmers, this being the highest 
percentage reached by any state in the Union. Now, all these per- 
sons must be reached, and they can be reached quickest and best 
by touching the things in which they are most interested. I care 
not so much for the commercial importance of cotton or of sugar- 
cane or of rice or of Indian corn as I do for the fact that thousands 
of our fellow-citizens grow these crops, and can be touched when 
we touch these crops. There are more than five million farms in 
the United States that raise poultry and millions of householders 
in towns and cities that do the same; three years ago there were 
over two hundred and fifty millions of fowls on the farms ; in 1890 
the value of poultry and its products exceeded the combined values 
(according to Watson) of the outputs of the iron mines, the coal 
mines and the mineral oil wells. What an opportunity is here to 
touch the people! 

The greatest problem before the nation to-day is how to reach 
and uplift the rural people. It is more important to us as a nation 
than the Philippine problem or any issue of politics or of social 
statics. It is even more pressing than the education and assimila- 
tion of the hordes that come to us from abroad, since the country 
people are widely scattered, there are no well digested and well 
organized means of reaching them, and agricultural subjects have 



L. H. Bailey. 117 

not yet been put in pedagogic form. This subject is of tremendous 
special importance to you of the South, since such a large propor- 
tion of your people are in the open country and there is such urgent 
need of the revitalizing of your agriculture. You are now largely 
a pastoral people. Manufactures and railroads and immigration 
are soon to change your economic equilibrium. You have scarcely 
yet entered the era of the phenomenal growth of cities. The pro- 
portion of farmers will grow less, — at the present time it is too 
large. Then will begin the new era in your agriculture : other 
parts of the country have suffered in these periods of shift, but you, 
shifting last, should profit by all previous mistakes. Now is the 
time to prepare for the change which, I believe, is surely coming 
to the South. Build schoolhouses. Reach your people. Tell them 
to be ready. Teach them how to live to get the most from the 
day as it passes. Instill a few fundamental principles for the better- 
ment of the farm. The adoption of a three-year or two-year rotation 
of crops is capable of doing more for most parts of the South and 
for every industry in it than any discussion of any number of theo- 
ries of economics or any act of Cc ngress could ever do. 

The role of the college of agriculture of the future is to be 
much more than the teaching of mere technical or professional agri- 
culture. It must concern itself with the whole question of the rural 
schools. The child must be put into touch with its own world ; 
and the child's world is the world of common things. I should 
prefer that my child know what a stone is than to know what the 
Matterhorn is. The whole tendency of our elementary education 
has been to begin with things beyond the child's realm. We began 
with books about things. Time is now coming when the child will 
begin with the things themselves, — with the objects and phenomena 
of its usual environment, the soil, the sky, the weather, the plants, 
the animals, the streams. At present the child often gets no hold 
on its own life, and yet its own life, in its own way, it must lead. 
Books and museums are really of only secondary and indirect value, 
yet we have made them to stand in the stead of everything else. For 
centuries we have taught by means of books : time is coming when 
we shall return to the methods of Socrates and of Christ. The 
country child suffers under a double misfortune, because the books 
are made for town conditions, if, indeed, they are made for any 
conditions at all. (I have made some of them myself !) Arithmetic 



ii8 The Conference for Education. 

has to do with brokerage and partnerships and partial payments, and 
other things that mean nothing to any child, least of all to the 
country child. Botany has to do with cells and protoplasm and crypto- 
gams. History deals with political affairs and wars, and only rarely 
comes down to physical facts and to those events that have to do with 
the real lives of the real people: and yet political and social affairs 
are only local affairs grown big. Geography used to begin with the 
universe and the solar system and the earth, and only finally, perhaps, 
came down to some concrete and familiar object or scene that the 
pupil can comprehend. Surely, the way to teach is to go from the 
small to the large, from the known to the unknown. Perhaps one 
reason why the farm boy makes such a resourceful man is because 
he depends so little on mere books. 

It is often said that the agricultural college turns the boy from 
the farm; but as a rule, the youth is turned from the farm long 
before he enters college. How deep his antipathy is for the farm he 
himself may not know until, under the influence of more stimulating 
environments, the antipathy ripens into active dislike. We do not 
realize how early in life this antipathy is bred. Professor Earl 
Barnes has made a thorough canvass of the subject in the State of 
New Jersey. Every school child in a certain area was asked what 
he intended to do when grown up. Of the children at seven years 
of age, 26 per cent would follow some occupation connected with 
rural life; of those at fourteen, only 2 per cent would follow such 
occupations. He concludes that the growth of the dislike for the 
country is due largely to the influence of the teacher in the country 
school. This teacher is usually a young woman fresh from the city 
school. Her sympathies are all with the city. She talks of the city 
more than of the country. She returns to the city at the end of the 
week. The city influence gradually pervades the minds of the pupils. 
Mean time, all the beauty and attractiveness and opportunity of the 
country are undeveloped, sometimes even unsuggested. In all this 
the teacher is unconscious that she is influencing the children city- 
ward ; it is the result of an all-pervading city point of view. Verily, 
how great is the unknown and unrecorded power of the teacher ! 

Again, I repeat that this dislike of the country is formed in 
very early life, and that we must correct the tendency in the home 
and in the elementary school rather than in the college. In a cer- 
tain country school in New York State, comprising some forty-five 



L. H. Bailey. 119 

pupils, I asked all those children that lived on farms to raise their 
hands ; all hands but one went up. I then asked all those that wanted 
to live on farms to raise their hands, and only that one hand went 
up ! Now, these children were too young to be interested in more 
bushels of potatoes or of beans, yet they had thus early formed 
their dislike of the farm. Some of this dissatisfaction may have been 
the expression of the yearning for something that we do not have; 
but this very yearning is in part the result of education. These 
children felt that their lot was less attractive than that of other 
children ; I concluded that a flower-garden and a pleasant yard and 
an attractive sitting-room would do more to content them with living 
on the farm than ten more bushels of wheat to the acre could do. 
Of course, it is the greater and better yield that will enable the 
farmer to supply these amenities ; but at the same time it must be 
remembered that the increased yield itself does not awaken a desire 
for them. I should make farm life interesting before I make it 
profitable. 

All this means that a new type of teaching and a new point of 
view must enter into the work of the elementary schools. We must 
seek to put the child into sympathy with his surroundings. This is 
the teaching that we now know as nature-study. (Here Professor 
Bailey explained what is meant by the nature-study movement, say- 
ing that it is not the teaching of science, is not telling the child things 
that grown-ups have found out, is not the addition of another 
" study" to the curriculum, but its purpose is to open the child's 
mind to the interest that it may derive from the common things with 
which it lives and works and plays, to the end that the child may love 
the country and be content to live therein. All this is a spiritual 
rather than an intellectual awakening, and Professor Bailey declared 
that he conceived his mission to be " the spiritualizing of agriculture." 

He also spoke of the school-garden movement, saying that the 
garden is to be a real means of teaching, not a mere embellishment. 
The time is coming when a garden will be as much a part of the 
equipment of a school as blackboards and books now are. It is 
strange that any school in the country districts should fail to have 
any point of relationship with the country or any contact with the 
life of the community. This shows that our country schools only 
reflect the methods of the old college and academy and university, 
and are not born of the soil for the quickening of the life that 
depends on the soil. 



I20 The Conference for Education. 

The speaker also traced briefly the history of the agricultural 
college idea, told how the college had failed and succeeded in its 
work, and spoke of the remarkable renewal of interest in these insti- 
tutions at the present moment. Perhaps the most remarkable devel- 
opments in educational lines are now taking place in the agricul- 
tural colleges of the corn-belt states. Enormous sums are now 
being expended on these colleges, sums that would have astonished 
even the wildest enthusiast of a generation ago. Some of these 
figures were given. The agricultural colleges are coming to be 
universities in themselves, with many departments. The old pro- 
fessorship of agriculture will soon be a thing of the past, as pro- 
fessorships of medicine now are, — these subjects are now divided 
into their specialties. The agricultural college of the University of 
Illinois now has twenty-eight persons in its faculty, and its buildings 
have two acres of floor space; and it is still rapidly building and 
growing. The Wisconsin College has expended more than $300,000 
on its buildings and its dairy department alone costs $51,000 a year 
to run, although a good part of this great expense is covered by the 
receipts from the dairy. Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, 
Ohio and others are developing great agricultural institutions. The 
real secret of the great growth of these institutions is the fact that 
they are approaching the subjects from the farm-point of view and 
have given up the older academic methods. Every important agri- 
cultural interest will be specially represented in the curriculum, and 
thereby every man who grows any crop stands a chance of being 
reached and helped. Professor Bailey cited the fact, in support of 
these statements, that the important special farmers' organizations — 
as dairymen, corn growers, breeders, cranberry growers, florists — 
are now demanding money of the state legislatures in order that their 
specialties may be taught and represented in the college. He also 
spoke of the great influence that fine buildings have in giving the 
farmer respect for his calling.) 

All these facts and points of view I have given you merely 
because they represent the newer tendencies in one of the greatest 
and most neglected fields of education. I do not mean to press 
them as the full solution of similar problems in Louisiana or any 
other state, but I believe that they show in general what the main 
lines of progress are to be. It matters not whether any person 
cares for agriculture as a business or not, but every person cares for 



L. H. Bailey. 121 

the interests of the people as a matter of altruism and for the state 
as a matter of pride and prestige. Three hundred thousand persons 
in Louisiana follow the plow, and their families receive support 
therefrom. The United States, of which you are a very important 
part, exports more than twice the value of agricultural products 
that it does of manufactured products, forest products, mining 
products and fishery products combined. Every man must have the 
light to enable him to do his best, in New York and likewise in 
Louisiana. There must be no submerged class if our country and 
the commonwealth are to prosper. Gladstone has said that the one 
great fact of the nineteenth century was the emergence of the free- 
dom of the individual. This freedom emerged from the sea of 
repression as great continents have emerged from the seas that once 
enveloped the earth. The only slavery of which we now have any 
fear is the slavery of ignorance. 

All these are problems of a general and national character. 
There is no commonwealth in which they are not paramount. Each 
commonwealth will attack and solve the problem as it must and for 
itself. The one fact that, more than any other, is borne in upon me 
as I visit the educational institutions of the country is their diversity ; 
and the second is their efficiency. I believe that the South will 
develop a well nigh ideal school system. You will avoid many 
of the mistakes that other regions have made. Since so many of 
your people are in the country and you are dominated so little by 
urban points of view, I believe that your system will be vitally 
original and very near to nature. It will have local color, and 
therefore great efficiency. It will be pervaded by your fine idealism. 
You have always been committed to the school and the college. 
Many of your greatest names are associated with these institutions. 
One of the tenderest and most inspiring incidents in our national 
history is the retirement of your own great commander from the 
sanguinary field of a tremendous civil war to the peace and hope- 
fulness of a teacher's life. I believe that it is a circumstance of 
national importance that there are associated in one university the 
names of Washington and Lee. 

I have noted with some apprehension the tendency of your 
young men and women to quit the land of their birth. You need 
them at home. The South holds the keys of the future. The next 
great national development is to come here. I hope you are to 



122 The Conference for Education. 

develop it yourselves. You have your hands on the problem. Agri- 
culture, manufacture, commerce, these are to be the structure and 
the body temporal; and education is to be the life-giving spirit. 
Manufacture and commerce will come. Agriculture you have had 
so long that it is in danger, here as elsewhere, of not receiving its 
share of the attention of the new time. We are always asking our- 
selves whether agriculture is on the decline and whether it pays. 
We seem to forget that an occupation which is necessary to the very 
existence of the race must prosper and must pay. Of course it may 
not prosper everywhere or pay everyone. These are questions of 
locality and of men. But in the large, agriculture is not so much 
declined as upset. In many parts of the country it is relatively 
stationary, while other businesses have made remarkable progress. 
In these regions and under these conditions, farmers will suffer. 
But the readjustment will come. It is only a question of time. 
There was an economic equilibrium; manufacture and commerce 
swept in like a tidal wave. Agriculture, oldest of the arts and newest 
of the sciences, agriculture went under the wave ; but it is just now 
emerging, wet with the tears of its sorrows but with its face towards 
the rising sun ! 

When our agricultural teaching is renewed and revitalized, 
when it shakes off academic methods borrowed from the teaching of 
language and literature and mathematics, when it puts itself in 
line with the best spirit and thought of the time, when it teaches 
more with objects than with books, then the young men and women 
will fill our agricultural schools, whether they desire education for 
living or for culture. I often wonder why we in the North have 
had so many students under the old system. Time is coming when 
we cannot keep them away. Then the profits of the farm will be 
computed not alone in dollars and cents, but quite as much in love 
of nature, independence of spirit and contentment of soul, — and all 
these any man can have when his mind is opened to apprehend 
them. I believe in the value of education by means of literature 
and history and science and art; but if I were confined to one 
means I should choose that education that would lead me to love the 
things that I see and the work that I do day by day. This outlook 
I should want to impress on my children ; but it is an affair of the 
heart, and if I do not live it I cannot teach it. 

Now, therefore, I return to my original thesis, — to the proposi- 



B. C. Caldwell. 123 

tion that every child should be educated by means of the common 
things, to the end that life may mean the most to him. This is a far 
larger question than the problem of teaching classics or mechanics 
or agriculture. It is fundamental to all good teaching of the child. 
A vicar of the Church of England, who has spent his life in work 
with the poor and outcast, said to me not long ago, " I always 
pray when I undertake to teach children. If the child is five years 
old, my prayer is this : ' O God, make me five years old. Amen.' " 

And if you teach the children, you must begin where the 
children are, — in the elementary school. In the city the elementary 
school is estabhshed: see that it is established also in the country. 
Build schoolhouses. Equip them well. Employ soulful and inspir- 
ing teachers, — you cannot afford to employ any other kind. Tax 
the property to pay for it; it will be an investment. Then relate 
the school to the daily life of its own community. Then every 
schoolhouse will have a voice, and it will say, I teach ! 

I teach ! 
The earth and soil 
To them that toil. 
The hill and fen 
To common men, 

That live just here; — 

The plants that grow, 
The winds that blow, 
The streams that run 
In rain and sun, 

Throughout the year ; — 

And then I lead 
Thro' wood and mead, 
Thro' mould and sod 
Out unto God, 

With love and cheer. 
I teach ! 

The President : — It is now my privilege to present to the Con- 
ference President B. C- Caldwell, of the State Normal School of 
Louisiana, who has kindly consented, upon very brief notice, to 
address us on " An Aspect of Educational Work in Louisiana." 

Mr. Caldwell: — Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, The 
State of Louisiana is divided into two sections by the Red River, 



124 ^^^^ Conference for Education. 

and these sections are almost as distinct as Minnesota and Texas. 
The northern part of the state is thus settled by people from the 
Eastern and Southern States, who belong to the Protestant faith, 
people of simple modes of life, small farmers, devoted to their 
churches and schools ; while the prairie country of south Louisiana 
was settled and is occupied by a people altogether different. The 
latter are the French-speaking people of Louisiana, and they give 
us an interesting aspect of the question of education in the Southern 
States, inasmuch as they bring to our consideration the only large 
body of non-English-speaking people in the South. 

We are accustomed to hearing all the French-speaking people 
described by the one term, " Creole" ; but there are two classes of 
the French, those who are descended from the settlers who were 
transported at the close of the French and Indian War from Nova 
Scotia and were settled by the English government in the prairie 
country along the Gulf of Mexico, and the other class of people, 
of the leisure class, of the patrician type, who took land grants along 
the Mississippi and the Red River. The people of this latter type 
speak a very pure Parisian French, the Acadians speak a patois, 
familiarly called in Louisiana " Gumbo." But they have this in 
common, all of these people are of the Roman Catholic faith, and 
they all have a certain distinct, characteristic attitude toward the 
work of the public schools. It will be interesting to you to hear, 
within the few minutes accorded me, of the educational work that 
has been done in the past thirteen years in south Louisiana. 

Thirteen years ago, in the parishes bordering on the Gulf, 
there was not a single public school building owned by the parish 
authorities. These children were gathered together at the parish 
school and taught by the priests, or by the Sisters of the Holy Name, 
or some one of the branches of the ministry of the Roman Catholic 
Church charged with the education of children. The education they 
received was of an extremely simple, primitive type. When the 
children had learned the Credo and the Ave Maria, the priest felt 
that his duty was well-nigh performed. The people of the leisure 
class, on the other hand, sent their children abroad ; some of the girls 
were sent to the great Ursuline Convent in New Orleans, and some 
of them were sent to Southern France ; while the boys were sent to 
schools in the North and East and some of them to France and 
Germany. 



B. C. Caldwell. 125 

When the work of the pubHc schools was first carried into the 
south Louisiana parishes, about 1890, the reception of the declara- 
tion that all the people should educate all their children together, 
was a very discouraging one. There was this element of opposi- 
tion: The people of the leisure class, those who were well-to-do, 
looked upon the public school as an eleemosynary institution ; it was 
a charity school; while the great mass of the people of the middle 
and lower classes looked upon the public school as an institution 
that would antagonize the faith that had been handed down to them 
by their fathers. It was thus a matter of almost infinite delicacy to 
enlist the interest of these people in the state schools, to bring within 
their comprehension the good that would result to them and to their 
children, through the development in the poorer parishes of a good 
system of public schools. This was done very largely through 
the priests themselves. At the start their attitude towards the 
public school work was naturally a somewhat unfriendly one, but 
in almost every one of these parishes two or more of the priests in 
charge were men of broad sympathy and with generous impulses 
toward the development of their people. Through them there grad- 
ually came to be sent to the training schools, to the normal school, 
to the state school in New Orleans, to the Peabody School at Nash- 
ville, some of the young girls from these parishes who learned how 
to teach the children and how to interest them in their school work. 
They came back to their parishes and helped to make popular the 
interest in the public schools then being established in the parishes 
of south Louisiana. 

It may seem somewhat strange to this audience in Virginia 
when I tell you that in many of the parishes to-day, in the parish 
of Lafayette for instance, where on last Sunday afternoon a new 
schoolhouse was dedicated, a model school really, and where the 
proposition of consolidating a number of schools into one is to be 
tried; that in that school 71 per cent of the children are unable to 
speak a word of the English language ; all of their instruction must 
be given in French. In an institute conducted in one of these 
parishes not long ago, I found that a large number of the teachers 
were unable to follow the work in English, and a great part of it 
had to be gone over again in French. 

This work, notwithstanding the prejudice, and notwithstanding 
the disadvantages under which it was done, is now bringing some 



126 The Conference for Education. 

very happy and gratifying results. In the report made by Dr. 
Alderman this morning, it was stated that the parish of Lafayette 
would soon vote a three-mill tax for the support of public schools. 
In the parish of St. Martin, the adjoining parish, there have been 
built during the past year six model, modern public schoolhouses. 
In this parish not long ago every school was taught by a Sister of 
the Holy Name. Now, there are graduates of the normal school 
teaching in seventeen out of twenty-six schools in that parish. The 
response to this appeal to the French-speaking people to bring the 
benefits of the public school within the reach of their children has 
been most interesting, and now people who only ten or twelve years 
ago could hardly understand why they should be taxed to establish 
and maintain public schools, are among the most zealous, earnest 
and ardent supporters of every movement tending to modernize and 
extend public school work throughout the parish. The French- 
speaking people present the best results wherever the benefit of the 
public school is given to them. They are people of a singularly 
happy, sunny disposition, living close to nature, all of them belong- 
ing to the class spoken of by the previous speaker, people who live 
in the open air throughout the year. They are a people of strong 
body, vigorous, athletic, hardy, given to outdoor sports, with simple 
tastes and with strong attachment to their homes. I visited two 
weeks ago a home in which the descendants of the original settler 
had been living for two hundred and two years. Many of them 
have the domestic instinct so strongly developed that they are loath 
to leave the parish or the neighborhood in which they were bred, 
and the appeal to bring into their homes the school that will give 
their boys and girls the training necessary to fit them for citizenship 
and self-support is now at last meeting hearty and generous recog- 
nition and prompt support. (Applause.) 

The President: — We will now have the pleasure of listening 
to an address by Dr. Francis G. Peabody, professor in Harvard 
University, the title being, " Knowledge and Service." 

Address — Knowledge and Service. 
By Dr. Francis G. Peabody. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: — I was traveling not 
long ago on a suburban train where it is the custom of the country 
that the name of the stations "shall be called by the brakeman. A 



Francis G. Peabody. 127 

lusty fellow thrust his head in at the front of the car and called out : 
" Lawrence Junction, next stop," and then, to my surprise, an insig- 
nificant fellow put his head in at the rear of the car and remarked, 
as was obviously true : " Same here." Such a remark seems appro- 
priate to make after the addresses to which we have listened, and I 
have little to add except the words of the brakeman : " Same here." 

I was not present at the Conference last year, though I had the 
pleasure of being present at Winston-Salem two years ago, and I 
should like to testify to the very remarkable progress made by the 
Conference during these two years in its definiteness of aim, as 
though the train on which we are embarked knew now at last where 
it was going and at what station it should stop. A passenger on 
the elevated railroad in Boston, somewhat the worse for drink, was 
carried round the entire system twice, not knowing where to disem- 
bark. Finally the conductor said to him : " What station do you 
want to get off at?" The man roused himself sufficiently to say: 
" What stations have you got ?" A few years ago we were asking 
ourselves whether we had any stations, and now we come to a defi- 
nite, special terminal station. It is like the journey which many of 
us have just happily completed, as we hurried from the North to 
meet with you here. First, came the sterile hills of New England, 
then the soft tints of the hills along the Southern shore, then the 
willow and the dogwood, then the fields of green, until at last we 
find ourselves in the heart of the effulgent Southern spring. 

I should like to express the satisfaction which one feels, in these 
days of grave and perplexing social problems, when he finds himself 
associated with any enterprise whose principles and methods are per- 
fectly clear. What to do in these days with the Philippines and the 
labor unions, the drink habit, the great cities and the Socialists — all 
this is full of perplexity and uncertainty, and the various panaceas 
are tried and rejected and reviled with alternating enthusiasm and 
despondency. But what should be done for the South, and by the 
South, and with the South, as to its immediate problem of progress 
and of politics is not a matter for dispute among reasonable men. 
The single address of Mr. Murphy on " The Task of the South" 
contains enough sound political economy and political ethics to sat- 
isfy an entire generation. One of my colleagues was showing 
another a Greek vase, and remarked : " Isn't it pretty ?" To which 
Professor Norton replied : " Pretty ? It is ultimate. It's the whole 



128 The Conference for Education. 

of art." One feels this same sense of conclusiveness as he reads Mr. 
Murphy's discussion, with its perfect balance of passion and power, 
and if nothing had been accomplished by the Southern Education 
Board beyond the discovery and utilization of its executive secre- 
tary, this achievement would justify us in regarding the past year 
as a success. That education is the key of Southern as of Northern 
security, that education does not mean the shirking of political 
service or the increase of racial antagonism, that education begins 
at the bottom and not at the top, that the South and the North have 
a common stake in the education of the whole people, that illiteracy 
is inconsistent with democracy, that the part of the North is not to 
patronize or criticise but to reinforce the initiative of the South, 
and that the strength and sacrifice of the Southern States for educa- 
tion present the most honorable and gallant achievement of modern 
American statesmanship — all this is conclusively determined, and 
this is the common faith in which we meet. The South has been 
tried by almost every test of manhood that could be devised ; by 
the devastation of war, by the pangs of reconstruction, by industrial 
poverty, by political conflicts, and when one now perceives the 
emergence of a new courage, a new self-mastery and a larger 
prosperity in the South, he is reminded of what a New Englander 
said to an Englishman as they stood together on the hill of Plymouth 
and looked across those sandy shores : " What do you raise in a 
country like this ?" said the foreigner. And the American answered : 
" We raise men." (Applause.) 

It is not necessary, however, to enter farther to-night into the 
details of this work. Indeed there are many of us who come here not 
as teachers but as learners, observing the general principles of this 
special enterprise, and asking ourselves how they may be applied to 
the interpretation of our own tasks. As one of us studies the Con- 
ference as a looker-on and learner, he cannot help being struck by the 
fact that our discussions do not concern themselves with a single 
principle, but with two principles which are, as a rule, held apart. 
On the one hand, this is a meeting in behalf of education, but on the 
other hand, its interest turns repeatedly to the thought of citizen- 
ship. Behind each address, each report, which appears to deal with 
the schools and the children, there stands always the thought of 
the nation, its welfare, its perils, and the part in its future which 
education must play. Thus the Conference is thinking, now of the 



Francis G. Peabody. 129 

child and now of the world, now of education and now of states- 
manship, now of the acquisition of knowledge and now of the call 
to service. How admirably the two were associated in the words 
of the Governor of this Commonwealth last evening ! " Political 
despotism," he said, " means academic despotism. Free schools mean 
a free State." (Applause.) 

Here then are, as it seems, two ideas rather than one, and this 
correlation of education and citizenship, of knowledge and service, 
is expressed by this Conference as it has been seldom expressed in 
the history of our nation. To think of the schoolmaster as a states- 
man, to have the political campaign of a great State marked by the 
war-cry, " Public schools for all the people," to recognize knowledge 
as the instrument of service and service as the end of knowledge — 
that is a union of two ideas which carries us far beyond the special 
intention of this Conference and into the general principles which 
for all of us interpret the meaning of life. 

Let me dwell for a moment upon this correlation of knowledge 
and service, for it is full of instruction, both for those who have to 
teach and for those who have to work. On the one hand, the call 
to service democratizes the world of knowledge. A generation ago 
knowledge stood quite apart from service. Education, like beauty, 
seemed its own excuse for being. Educated people were a privileged, 
separated, patrician. Brahmin caste. They spoke the same dialect. 
They quoted from the same classics. They even held that educational 
value in study was decreased as one approached the bread and 
butter sciences. Then one day the modern world was touched and 
transformed by the spirit of democracy. A new test was applied 
for the worth of life, the test of service. A man must be not only 
good, but good for something. We speak of a rich man as worth a 
certain sum, but the spirit of democracy asks, not how much is 
he worth, but is he worth having? Does the rich man perform 
a public service? If he is not a serviceable instrument of public 
good, then he is a public nuisance and must be in some way abated. 
Are his riches, as Mr. Ruskin once said, his wealth because it is 
well with him, or should they be called his ill-th because it is ill with 
him? Or, as Mr. Ruskin remarked in another place, suppose a 
man in a wrecked vessel tied a bag of gold pieces around his 
waist, with which later he was found at the bottom, should we 



130 The Conference for Education. 

say, as he was sinking, that he had his gold, or should we say that 
his gold had him? 

Precisely the same test is to be applied to education. How 
much is it worth? Is it creating a fit instrument for the service of 
the modern world? It is not a question of the higher or of the 
lower education. It is a question of a person — rich or poor. North 
or South, white or black — who is to be drawn out — as the word 
education means, discovered, shaped, broadened and tempered for 
the service of the world, and the best education for each person is 
that which draws out the most of that person and applies him most 
effectively to the world's service. 

This is democracy in education, and how searching is the test 
which it applies to one's own life as one considers his own education. 
" Democracy," says Mr. Lowell, " means not ' I am as good as 3^ou 
are,' but ' You are as good as I am.' " It means mutual respect and 
reverence in the practice of the diverse ways of service in the 
modern world. I was talking two years ago with a Hampton stu- 
dent who was mending a wagon wheel, and I said to him : "I should 
not like that task to be set before me," to which the boy, with per- 
fect simplicity, answered : " Yes, sir, but there are many things 
which you can do which I cannot." Was not that a fair statement 
of the way in which the principle of service is democratizing the 
world of knowledge? Many a man to-day thinks himself educated 
when in reality he is a mere survivor of a prehistoric type among 
the needs of the modern world. He is like a man who rose one day 
in New York and read a report of his own death in the morning 
paper. He hurried down to the editor to protest. "-But," the editor 
said, " we cannot correct the statement. Everybody has read it and 
survived the shock. You are practically dead, but, if it would in 
any degree relieve your mind, we will start you again in the column 
of births." 

That is one aspect of the modern world. Service democratizes 
knowledge. The other side of the subject, however, is still more 
impressive. If it is true that service democratizes knowledge, it is 
also true that knowledge idealizes service. How to make drudgery 
beautiful, how to dignify routine, how to rescue one's soul from the 
literalism of the world, how to be something more than just one 
wheel, one cog within a wheel, in the great machine of the world-^ 
that is the cry that comes from every heart which is caught, as which 



Francis G. Peabody. 131 

of ours is not, in the whirling mechanism of modern life. And the 
answer is not to be found by going round the work of life, but by 
going through it and idealizing service through knowledge. Here 
is the province of education. To do, as Booker Washington has said, 
a common thing in an uncommon way, to illuminate the task of life 
just as it must be done, with a sense of power, mastery, and insight, 
that is the gift of education to service. The trouble with most of 
our work is, not that it is essentially mechanical, but that it is stu- 
pidly and mechanically done. 

I read the other day of two maiden ladies who hired a horse 
at a stable and inquired whether he had any faults. " He is per- 
fectly trustworthy," said the stable keeper, " except that he does not 
like the rein on his tail." On returning, the ladies were asked 
whether the drive had been spared mishaps, and they answered, that 
it had rained hard, but fortunately they had an umbrella and held it 
open at the proper angle so that the good horse did not feel the 
shower. (Laughter and applause.) 

That is a picture of much of the work of the world — a laborious 
doing of superfluous things with unnecessary self-sacrifice and 
wasted energy. The end of education is the interpretation and 
idealization of service. The application of mind to industry is the 
redemption of routine. One's work is, in itself, neither high nor 
low ; it is one's part in the work of the world, and this large thought 
humbles knowledge and dignified service. 

" Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, 
Makes that and the action fine." 

And is this, one asks himself finally, a law of life which the 
modern world has created for itself? Is this democratizing of 
knowledge by service and this idealizing of service by knowledge a 
new conception of modern thought? On the contrary, here is the 
very test of character, the giving of a disciplined life to a working 
world, which the Christian religion has always presented as its ideal 
and which the Master of Christianity laid down, not for His follow- 
ers only, but even for Himself, as the law of an effective life. " For 
their sakes," said Jesus Christ, and in perhaps the greatest words that 
even He ever uttered, " I sanctify myself." " For their sakes" — that 
is the end of social service. " I sanctify myself" — that is the means 
of personal preparedness, and to give the one to the other — the sane- 



132 The Conference for Education. 

tified, educated self for the sake of the hungry, thirsty, weary, 
unsanctified world — that seemed to the Master of men a social ideal 
worthy of His disciples and of Himself. Towards this ideal of the 
Christian life the new world, with a new concentration of desire, 
begins at last to turn. Of this convergence of knowledge with 
service it dares to dream, and in this faith this Conference meets 
from year to year. What is its aim but to guide knowledge to the 
feet of service and to lift service to the height of knowledge ? What 
is the picture of an effective modern life which the Conference cher- 
ishes and desires to reproduce ? It is the picture of a fertilizing river 
flowing through a thirsty plain. Up in the hills where the stream 
first rises is the task of education, the quiet fidelity of the teacher's 
work; but all the while the stream hears the call to service sum- 
moning it to the plains below. To give the spring to the river, the 
water to the world, the school to the State — that is the task which 
confronts us here. Shut off the fountain from the world and the 
dammed up spring becomes a source of peril rather than of power. 
Detach the water of service from the springs of education and the 
stream runs dry. The two are made for each other — the hills for 
the plain, the fountain for the stream, knowledge for service; and 
as the educated life flows forth to the service of the world, sanctify- 
ing itself for others' sakes, ministered unto only that it may minister, 
it takes up the great words of the Master and sings as it flows : " I 
am coming that these others also may have life and may have it 
abundantly." (Long applause.) 

The Conference adjourned until Friday morning, April 24, at 
10 o'clock. 



THIRD DAY. 



MORNING SESSION. 

Friday, April 24, 1903. 

The Conference was called to order at 10 o'clock a. m. 

The President: — The special order of business at the open- 
ing of this session is the report of the committee on organization 
and on the nomination of officers, Dr. Walter H. Page, chairman. 

Dr. Page: — Mr. President, the committee on organization and 
nominations has instructed me to report that the simple form of 
organization of previous Conferences shall be continued, for every 
one is eligible for membership who believes in the education of all 
the people. 

Nominations of officers for the ensuing year and until the close 
of the next Conference are reported as follows : 

For president, Mr. Robert C. Ogden, of New York. 

For vice-president, Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Alabama. 

For secretary, Dr. B. J. Baldwin, of Alabama. 

For treasurer, Mr. W. A. Blair, of North Carolina. 

Members of the executive committee, whose duty it shall be 
to decide the place where the next Conference shall be held and 
to arrange the program for it, the president of the Conference 
ex officio chairman : Mr. B. B. Valentine, Richmond ; Mr. Joseph G. 
Brown, North Carolina ; Chancellor R. B. Fulton, of the University 
of Mississippi ; President B. C. Caldwell, of the State Normal School 
of Louisiana; Superintendent J. B. Gibson, of Columbus, Ga. ; 
President D. F. Houston, of the Agricultural and Mechanical Col- 
lege of Texas; President Jesse, of the University of Missouri; 
Superintendent G. F. Glenn, of Jacksonville, Fla. ; State Superin- 
tendent Mynders, of Tennessee; President S. A. Snyder, of Wof- 
ford College, Spartanburg, S. C. 

For the committee on resolutions: Mr. Richard Watson 

(133) 



134 The Conference for Education. 

Gilder, editor of the Century; Hon. John B. Knox, of Anniston, 
Ala.; Professor E. C. Branson, of Georgia; State Superintendent 
Joyner, of North Carolina ; Mr. E. T. Sanford, of Knoxville, Tenn. 

The Chairman (Mr. E. T. Sanford, of Tennessee, in the 
chair) : — The first thing in order will be the question of the adop- 
tion of the report of the committee as to the president and officers 
named. 

On motion the report was adopted. 

The Chairman : — The next thing in order will be the elec- 
tion of president for the ensuing year. 

On motion Mr. Ogden was elected president. 

The Chairman : — I have now the pleasure of presenting to 
you your president for the ensuing year. (Applause.) 

President Ogden : — Mr. Chairman, it is very evident to the 
members of the Conference that I am now in a condition of " physical 
decline," and, therefore, it is all the more a tender compliment that 
under these circumstances you are willing to commend me to your 
service for another year. For the confidence which has been reposed 
in the executive officer in years past I thank you very much, and I 
appreciate very deeply this renewed expression of your confidence. 
It will be my pleasure to serve the Conference, conscious always of 
my great deficiency, conscious always that much has been left undone 
that ought to have been done, but yet with the purpose beneath and 
behind to serve you as best I am able. (Applause.) 

It is a little difficult to conduct the business of this organization 
in the serious matter of the election of officers without a constitution 
and without by-laws for our guidance. On previous occasions the 
simple form of electing the nominees of the committee on organiza- 
tion and nominations has been to submit them to a viva voce vote. 
If you will allow the Chair to suggest it, in order that there may 
be absolute freedom of speech and of action, before this election 
proceeds further, some one might offer a motion that the vote 
should be taken in this way; and if that resolution is adopted, a 
form will have been secured and the Chair will have a basis on 
which to proceed. I shall be glad to entertain a motion that the 
election of officers shall be as already held, by viva voce vote. 

On motion it was so ordered ; whereupon, on motion, the gentle- 
men, as nominated by the committee, were duly elected. 

The President: — According to a resolution passed at the 



Business Session. 135 

beginning of the Conference, the officers elected last year will con- 
tinue in their duties until the termination of this Conference, but 
I must now ask one of the vice-presidents, Dr. Walter H. Page, to 
take the chair and conduct the remaining exercises of the morning. 

Dr. Charles Meserve (Dr. Page in the chair) : — Mr. Chair- 
man, if it is in order I would like to make a motion and precede it 
with a sentence of explanation. Five years ago last June, when 
this Conference organized at Capon Springs, West Virginia, the Rev. 
A. B. Hunter, of Raleigh, was elected secretary. He has performed 
his duties in an unusually capable and conscientious manner. He 
has done admirable work in his office. I have no doubt he is glad 
to retire. I think, as a mark of gratitude, we ought to extend to 
Dr. Hunter, of Raleigh, a vote of thanks for the unusually able and 
faithful manner in which he has performed the duties of his office. 

Unanimously adopted. 

The Chairman : — It is perhaps pertinent to announce that all 
the officers of the Conference were changed, the committee on nomi- 
nations believing in the good doctrine of rotation in office — all except 
the president. The newly-elected treasurer of the Conference has an 
announcement he wishes to make. 

Treasurer Blair : — Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen. 
There is always some little expense in connection with a Conference 
of this kind. There is the expense of the stenographer, the expense 
of printing the proceedings and various items of that character, 
which have always been provided for in some way or another. Now 
there is a feeling on the part of a great many people who come 
from different sections of the country to this Conference that they 
would like to have some little financial interest in it also, that they 
should have some opportunity to contribute to these expenses. The 
executive committee has arranged it so that they shall have an 
opportunity to do so. 

Some envelopes will be circulated among you, and in the first 
place we would like to have on each envelope the name and address 
of the person contributing. These envelopes will be passed around 
during the day and an explanation made concerning them. 

The Chairman : — I am sure it will be with great pleasure that 
we will hear this morning an address on one side of education which 
has come rapidly to the front and is having a prodigious influence 
in the development of the South. Dr. Lyman Hall, president of the 



136 The Conference for Education. 

Georgia Institute of Technology, at Atlanta, will speak to us on 
" The Needs of the New South." 

Address — Needs of the New South. 

By Dr. Lyman Hall, President of Georgia Institute of Technology, 

Atlanta, Ga. 

Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen, A prominent 
American said not long ago that a dollar was the most pro- 
ductive thing in the world. It is needless to say he was a dis- 
ciple of that doctrine which has given the dollar an adjective 
which is applied to only the King of kings, the almighty dollar, 
" greater than all things visible and invisible," immeasurable in 
quantity of results, infinite in accomplishment. But there is a 
fatal defect in the omnipotence of the dollar. It is material, and 
being material it is subject to the physical law of material things, 
action and reaction. The dollar on the stock exchange which makes 
a fortune to-day for Mr. Smith loses the same fortune for Mr. Jones, 
and when the sun goes down, there is no increase in assets. The 
happiness on the credit side of the exchange is offset by the misery 
on the debit side. 

The most productive thing in the world, in fact, is not a dol- 
lar, or two dollars, or a million dollars ; but it is something which 
is not material, it is the germ of that power which moves ships and 
trains, navies and armies, which builds empires and populates con- 
tinents where formerly reigned only desolation and savage beasts 
and men; it is something which gives no promise in appearance of 
its possibilities, but it is alive and bristling with energy and horse- 
power; it is a boy, and above all an American boy. 

The man who has an American boy, in good health, with mod- 
erate ability, restless, with his life-blood rushing through his young 
veins like a torrent, a boy like the one who told his teacher that if 
he did not give him something to do he would " bust" ; a man who 
has a boy like that should be happier than a king, . happier than all 
the money on earth could make him, and the more of them he has 
the better his chance for greater dividends of joy and happiness 
and pride. 

But this effervescent nucleus of greatness is productive in sev- 
eral directions. He is like the dollar in two ways, in that he brings 
forth good fruit and evil fruit. If he is to be a professional man. 



Lyman Hall. 137 

or a technical man, there must be careful and patient training, force- 
ful dealing with faults and evil tendencies — the rod? Well, when 
the oracle at Delphi was consulted, before a great battle, as to the 
result of the coming conflict, the ambiguous reply was : " There shall 
be a great victory." So let us say of the rod, it should be used sel- 
dom and as the last extremity. This is the first duty an American 
pays on foreign articles, and, feeling their injury, learns his first 
lesson in protection. 

After the rudiments comes the specialization of talent, the shap- 
ing of the undergraduate into a maximum of force in a minimum 
of time for the work he has to do as a factor in his country's 
progress as the author of his own individual destiny and reputation. 

In this connection it is well to come to the point of my subject 
and emphasize the needs of the New South. The New South ? Why 
so called? Fifteen years ago a machine shop and foundry between 
Georgia and Alabama could not secure workmen or apprentices at 
more than living wages. The proprietor sent his son to the School 
of Technology in Atlanta, the young man went home, donned his 
overalls, and went to work in his father's shop. Since that time he 
has been able to employ any boy in the county at fifty cents a day. 
That county was regenerated in its ideas. 

Twenty-five years ago it was impossible for a young man to 
wear overalls in the day and a dress suit in the evening. No such 
false pride exists to-day. It is the desire of 100,000 young men 
in the South to become workers in mines, in factories, in mills. 
They realize the boundless resources of their section and are filled 
with ambition to perform great deeds in industry and progress. 
These facts give the cause for the name " New South." 

The vast manufacturing interests of our cities, the application 
of scientific principles, the establishment of great power plants, the 
working of mines, the development of every natural resource with 
mechanical appliances, demand men — staunch, sturdy, powerful, 
workingmen — men who not only have the strength to do, but have 
the intelligence and training to do what is wisest and best. 

Have we such men? No. Have we the facilities for training 
such men? No. These answers come from the shops, mills, power 
plants, and manufactories which are rising like magic in every 
Southern state. 

The future with its increasing markets, its tropical trade, its 



138 The Conference for Education. 

Panama Canal, its demand for manufactured articles from every 
shore touched by the waters of the Pacific, gives prophecy of still 
greater demands. 

Are the colleges and schools in the South adequately responding 
to the demand for such men ? Not at all. In my state we are mak- 
ing ten professional men — lawyers, doctors, authors, teachers, states- 
men if you will — where we are making one technically trained 
expert. 

What is the immediate prospect for a young lawyer without 
influence or money? I asked one in Atlanta how much he made. 
" Well," he said, " you know the big dogs are all in at the meat, and 
we on the outside only get a small bone which escapes from them 
occasionally." A young lawyer in Atlanta said to a barrister of wide 
experience, " I have come to you for advice. I have begun the prac- 
tice of law in your city, but my means are limited. I have $400.00 
in cash for expenses. What would you advise me to do to obtain 
a vigorous practice ?" The barrister replied, " Well, my friend, I 
advise you to lend the $400.00 to a dozen of your intimate friends, 
and proceed in the courts to collect the same. You will thus be 
guaranteed a rushing business and a vigorous practice for the next 
ten years." 

That is the only sure-cure prescription for want of occupation 
among the younger members of the bar I have heard, and I suppose 
it would be applicable in Richmond as well as in Atlanta. 

The young physician has a great advantage over the technical 
graduate. 

In engineering no mistakes must be made. No matter how 
great the ability, how complicated the calculation, if the bridge does 
not hold, if the machine does not go, if the mill does not pay a divi- 
dend, the merest novice can see that the engineer is incompetent, 
and he has to fail and sink under a universal verdict. But who can 
criticise the physician, fresh from a course of medicine and expert 
as an operator? (And do you know in some states they teach young 
men to saw off or set a leg in two or three years, while we require 
four to teach them to perform the same operation on a mahogany 
table?) The physician can make many errors beyond the knowledge 
of the layman. He sometimes buries his secrets. Better far, had he 
been taught to get something out of the ground than to put some- 
thing in it. 



Lyman Hall. 139 

Not one blemish would I place on the fair names and splendid 
work of those universities and classical schools which are cher- 
ished in every state in the Southland, and from whose walls have 
come men renowned at home and abroad. But I would say to them, 
turn some of your influence and force towards the supplying of a 
great demand which we cannot meet. Such a course would not 
reflect upon your dignity nor tarnish your prestige. 

What does far off Germany say, home and birthplace of great 
universities : 

An eminent German scientist, on being asked how he would 
establish a great university, replied : " If I had sufficient means, I 
would equip some laboratories ; if the money held out, I would erect 
some buildings ; if there was still some money left, I would employ 
some professors." 

The greatest boon which could come to the South to-day would 
be the establishment of shops and laboratories in every school and 
college from Pennsylvania to New Mexico. Even then the supply 
would not begin to approach the demand. 

I speak what I know to be facts. Since the first of April I 
have had at least ten applications for young men who knew some- 
thing about boilers, or electricity, or mills. And I am not keeping 
an intelligence office. I have had three applications in one day for 
draughtsman, at almost any price. I will give you a specimen appli- 
cation, the writer has evidently tried in vain for what he wants. 
His letter would grace a baccalaureate, and I give it as the best of 
its species : 

" Dear Sir : — I am looking for a technical graduate to make himself gen- 
erally useful to me, chiefly in experimental work and patent drawings. I 
really want to put him into training to become our factory superintendent, 
but it is probably not best to tell him so at first. Pay will be $100.00 per month 
to start, but the specifications are not exacting. I want my man to know a 
lot of things. He must know how to get along with employes. He must have 
a natural inborn tendency to order, system and discipline, and he must have 
that mysterious quality ' accomplishfulness.' The ability to get through with 
work. The habit, of despatch. He must also furnish his own 'push,' his own 
E. M. F. There are a good many men who are like Josiah Allen's dog. He 
said the dog was all right to chase cows, if you only ran on a little ahead to 
encourage him. This is not the kind of a dog or man I want. I really want 
(but do not expect to find him this side of St. Peter) a man who will run 
on ahead and encourage me. I believe in heredity, too, and I want the son of 
a mechanic. A young fellow who has been brought up in the brass belt of 



140 . The Conference for Education. 

Connecticut would do. We are going into several new lines. Responsibility 
will come as fast as the young man can digest it, probably faster. Can you 
recommend anybody as approximating the specifications?" 

That "brass belt of Connecticut" is good. I have long sus- 
pected it, but never knew before that brass is to be found in Con- 
necticut in the natural state. 

The fact, then, needs no demonstration, that the facilities for 
turning out engineers, technical experts, etc., are inadequate. The 
remedy is the establishment of courses in engineering in every col- 
lege, in every university. Yes, do more than establish the course, 
advertise it; make it as popular with the undergraduate as the 
classics. I have known of a college, having three hundred students, 
giving courses to two students in agriculture and a dozen in engi- 
neering. In such cases something is the matter with the engineering 
and agriculture, or, perhaps, with a false sentiment existing against 
them, the students are not to blame for such a condition. 

This would be a great advance in the higher education mostly 
needed in this section, and would be accelerated with experience. 

But this would benefit the college boy only ; it would not have 
an influence on the great majority of boys who are here now and 
who will continue to come, an innumerable host, eager to learn, 
willing to work, provided for in the common schools only, then 
brought face to face with the fact that few of us here have had to 
face desperately, namely, self-preservation, or making a living. 

It is almost an axiom that the boy who is poor to-day will be 
the influential factor in affairs of every description twenty-five years 
in the future. If he has that advantage from his environment with- 
out opportunity, how much greater will be his advantage with ample 
opportunity? There will be more of him, more in him. 

There should be established in every congressional district in 
the South a trade school for the practical instruction of boys from 
14 to 18 years of age, in the ordinar}^ trades and the particular arts 
and industries which flourish in his section. Such schools would 
be almost, if not qiiite, self-supporting, from the natural output of 
products. From such schools would pour a continuous stream of 
skilled workmen and artisans, in all the arts and trades, who could 
demand a minimum wage of $2.50 per day. The fields of light 
employment offer little or no inducement. Women have come 
forward as assistants and employes in every branch of business, at 



Lyman Hall. 141 

a smaller salary than married men can afford to work for. And the 
boy of seventeen who cannot go to college or technical school, who 
has had no training for special work, is forced into the field of 
unskilled labor, and only the select may obtain employment on the 
street railways, the police force, and the fire department, at much 
smaller wages than the skilled workmen can command. 

The trade schools should come quickly and must come. It will 
be an innovation with us. I do not believe there is a school in the 
South where a white boy can learn bricklaying, or plumbing, furni- 
ture making, or practical manufacturing in wood and metal, and 
clay, on a practical commercial basis. Our technical schools are 
sending out a few leaders — superintendents, scientists — who are not 
to form the rank and file of skilled labor. But the colored race is 
meeting this problem with abundant means, had for the asking. 
Their industrial schools are making skilled workmen who com- 
mand good wages, and who are turned from employment by no 
false sentiment, by no prejudice. These schools are increasing in 
number and size. When the colored race all become skilled brick- 
layers, somebody will have to carry the mortar. When they all 
become plumbers, who are going to be the helpers, the men who 
carry the tools? When they become scientific farmers, who are 
going to be the laborers? We Southerners, we Southern whites? 
No. We have settled that question long ago, and Richmond, Va., 
is the last place on earth to ask that question and receive a doubtful 
reply. But, unless we have trade and industrial schools, our boys 
will have to carry the mortar for somebody, even if they have to 
emigrate to do it. 

But I make no prophecy of ill-omen. Pointing at the spectre 
does not imply embracing it or acknowledging its supremacy. The 
Southern people will, I feel sure, meet the issues which are forced 
upon them. They will provide for their sons in due season. And 
while some philanthropy fails to find its way here, unless there is 
something to give color to the question, our state government, our 
legislatures (and the General Education Board seems to be fol- 
lowing the pathway blazed by our own people), bestowing benefits 
upon the white boy of the South, and at the same time lending a 
helping hand to the weaker race, will surely prepare means for their 
own sons for the preservation of the prestige of their inheritance, 
for the great destiny which beckons them to prepare for future 



142 The Conference for Education. 

conflicts in commerce, in science, in skill, and in art, with the greatest 
nations of the earth. 

The Chairman : — Dr. Ira Remsen, president of Johns Hopkins 
University, expected to be here to speak to us this morning, but he 
has just sent this telegram: 

I find it impossible to attend the Conference. Please make my 
excuses. I wish to be with you to express my good will and my desire to 
co-operate." 

But all the news is not bad. I think that everyone here will 
agree with rne in saying that in not any part of our country can it be 
found that the newspapers give so much attention, or such intelli- 
gent attention, to the cause of universal education as in the Southern 
states. Go where you will and pick up any kind of a paper, be it a 
daily paper, weekly paper, religious paper, industrial paper, any 
sort. of paper, and you will not only find intelligent reading matter 
about the necessity of education, but hearty approval of every effort 
to educate the people in every way, from the higher education down 
to the building of public schools. And the editors, as we had abun- 
dant evidence yesterday, and shall have another proof this morning, 
do not restrict their activity to writing in their columns, but they 
are ever ready to instruct us by word of mouth. It gives me great 
pleasure, therefore, to introduce to you Mr. Josephus Daniels, editor 
of the News and Observer, of Raleigh, North Carolina. 

Address — The Progress of Southern Education. 
By Josephus Daniels, Esq., of Raleigh, N. C. 

Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen, Your program 
committee, desiring to select the best qualified man to speak on the 
progress of Southern education, invited ex-Governor and ex-Senator 
Jarvis, of North Carolina, to make the address at this hour. Impor- 
tant legal engagements prevented his attendance, and only a few 
days ago I was requested to take his place on the program. 

I regret that you are denied the privilege of hearing that grand 
old commoner, who for forty years has been a leader in the educa- 
tional, political and industrial progress of the South. As a boy, 
he volunteered in the Confederate army, returning home with a 
shattered arm. But with a clear head, a stout heart and a brave 



Josephus Daniels. 143 

spirit he has been truly an educational Gamaliel in his common- 
wealth. 

I suppose I was selected in his place because, as a boy, living 
in an adjoining county, I sat at his feet and am supposed to have 
caught his spirit and imbibed his views. 

In his robust old age, he has recently led a fight to establish a 
graded school and erect commodious buildings for it in his own 
town, consenting to serve as chairman of the board of trustees. 
There is the true civic spirit for you — an ex-governor and an ex- 
senator thinking it not beneath his dignity to serve on a local 
school board, and take active leadership in local contests for public 
education. 

The educational problem in North Carolina is, in most respects, 
identical with that in other Southern states. The condition in one 
Southern state is the condition in all. Therefore I shall confine my 
remarks to North Carolina. With a few modifications or additions, 
they will apply equally to every Southern state. 

There have been four obstacles to educational progress in North 
Carolina : 

1. The negro, enfranchised against the protest of the people, 
who were forced against their will to pay a tax to educate him. 

2. Poverty — grinding poverty — following war and reconstruc- 
tion, such as this generation cannot know. 

3. The lack of qualified teachers and the lack of inducement to 
capable men and women to become teachers. 

4. High mountain ranges and numerous water-courses in the 
west, where people live far apart and where compact school districts 
are impossible, and great pocosons, or swamph, in portions of the 
east, which present the same barriers to consolidation in many parts 
of the coast region that the mountain ranges present in the west. 

These four obstacles : but the greatest of these has been, is now, 
and must be, at least in this generation, the negro. He has been 
the lion in the path, the ever present and often insurmountable 
obstacle to public education. There are those who assert that many 
opponents of taxation for public education on other grounds use the 
expenditure of money for negro education as a pretext, and that if 
no share of public money went to educating the negro they would 
still oppose taxes for public education. That may be true with some, 
but the naked truth is, that much of the money from taxation — I 



144 ^^^ Conference for Education. 

had almost said the bulk of it — that has gone to negro education, 
has been given against the judgment of Southern taxpayers. Here, 
where we are seeking to get at the real facts, so that the best results 
may follow, there is no need to look at things except just as they 
are — to paint the picture as it really is — warts, freckles and all. 

Is it surprising that the Southern people, in the ashes of a 
poverty that pride largely concealed from the world, resented the 
enfranchisement of their slaves? Is it surprising that they cried 
out against being taxed to educate the children of negroes, newly 
freed, when the losses of war sent their own children, unused to 
manual work, into the fields to perform the coarsest labors ? When 
zealous women from the North, with the missionary instinct to 
uplift the negro, came South and themselves taught the negroes and, 
in some cases, mingled with them upon terms of social equality, 
do you wonder that the Southern people felt that these teachers had 
come South to put the bottom rail on top? And when in some 
instances, their teaching seemed at first to produce among some of 
the worst young negroes a vicious attitude, do you wonder at hos- 
tility to negro education in the South? When the statement is 
published upon the authority of leading teachers that the census 
reports show the negro to be four and a half times more criminal in 
New England, where the negroes are better educated than in the 
black belt where illiteracy is greatest, is it a matter of astonishment 
that men declare to-day that negro education is a failure? 

The marvel of it all is, not that many Southern people cried out 
against paying taxes to educate negroes, believing that it did them 
no good, but that notwithstanding their utter disbelief in its good 
results or their skepticism of its value, they have gone on, year after 
year, spending more and more money to educate the negro children. 
Do you say, " They deserve no credit, they did it because the new 
constitutions required that there should be no discrimination"? 
That is largely true, but it must never be forgotten that all over 
the South, before i860, good women had taught slaves to read and 
write, so that when emancipation came, there were not a few negroes 
who had been, in an educational sense, made fit for suffrage. 

The Southerners believed then, they believe now, they always 
will believe, with Henry Ward Beecher, " We should make the 
negro worthy first before giving him suffrage." Tourgee's hindsight, 
better than his foresight, caused him to prove that in the contrary 



Josephus Daniels. 145 

policy pursued, the attempt was to make bricks without straw. 
There are many Southern people who believe thoroughly in edu- 
cating the negro, and believe that it helps him and the whole country, 
and their unselfish efforts in his behalf are beyond all praise. There 
are thousands and tens of thousands who do not believe in it at all, 
and who are frank to say that, in their judgment, it does nobody 
good. There are others who, seeing the examples of negroes who 
have been helped by education, and being surrounded by negroes 
whose smattering of education has done them harm, are halting 
between two opinions. There are others — and in this class I believe 
most of the thoughtful people of the South are to be found — who 
feel that, whatever may be the result, they dare not shut the door 
of hope and opportunity which education may open to any people 
anywhere — the negro in the South, the Indian in the West, the 
Filipino in Manila. They do not expect of education that it will 
change the negro rapidly. They know to the contrary. They hope, / 
they believe, they trust, that eventually it will prove beneficial, 1 
because they have faith that light and knowledge will surely bless 
wherever they abound. (Applause.) 

The eloquent Southern Methodist bishop, George F. Pierce, 
regarded by Toombs as the most eloquent of Georgians, was once 
asked if he believed that the heathen would be saved if the Chris- 
tians refused to send the Gospel to them. " It is not a question to ^ 
you, my friend," replied the bishop, " whether the heathen will be 
saved if you do not help to send them the Gospel. That is God's 
business. He commands you to send the Gospel. The question for 
ybu to consider is : ' Will you be saved if you disobey God's com- 
mand to send it?' " 

With this last class the question is not : " Can I demonstrate by 
statistics, by mathematics, by investigation, to my perfect satisfac- 
tion, whether negro education is worth what it costs?" The ques- 
tion is : " Would I dare to say to any human being, ' You shall not 
have the chance which education may give of improving your 
mental, moral and physical welfare'?" 

Since 1870, according to Hon. W. T. Harris, United States 
Commissioner of Education (Report of U. S. Com. of Ed., 1889- 
1900, volume II, page 2501), the South has spent $109,000,000 
for negro education. North Carolina alone has spent $5,380,770.74. 
Now if this money had been spent by people who sincerely believed 
10 



146 The Conference for Education. 

it was being well invested, these figures would not seem so large, 
but when it is remembered that the majority of the men who paid 
this money either disbelieved entirely in the education of the negro, 
were skeptical as to its value, or favored it as Bishop Pierce said 
men must consider foreign missions, and when it is remembered that 
such men have spent out of their poverty, produced by a disastrous 
war, more than $100,000,000 in thirty years, I say that it is, all things 
considered, the most remarkable and astounding investment of money 
that any people ever made. 

The second obstacle to educational progress in the South has 
been poverty. 

For almost a century most of the savings of the Southern people, 
most of the South's surplus of wealth, had been invested in slaves. 
In i860 the reported value of slaves was over two billion dollars. If, 
without any devastation of war, any loss of earning capacity by the 
men killed or wounded in battle, or diseased by exposure incident to 
camp life, this immense sum of money had been taken from the 
South, it would have been wretchedly poor. Add to the loss of the 
accumulations and savings of many years, the losses in other prop- 
erty, which the vanquished must always bear in war, the even 
greater calamity in the death and maiming of its strongest and best 
bread-winners, and some faint idea of the poverty which the South 
faced in 1865 may be grasped. This utter, abject poverty, involving 
the denial of the common necessities, can never be known or appre- 
ciated. 

Better still, in order to get at the losses sustained by the South 
as a result of the war, let us suppose that to-morrow in New England 
and the Middle States every dollar invested in the stock of factories 
and in banks, and deposited in savings banks and trust companies, 
was completely swept away. And, in addition to losing all that 
represented the savings of past generations, the present and future 
generations should be forced to pay the interest upon bonds issued 
when the banks and factories were prosperous — if you could sup- 
pose such a calamity to those prosperous commonwealths — you 
would then have some conception of the dire distress and almost 
hopeless poverty that confronted the South when Lee's soldiers 
returned from Appomattox. Talk of the heroes of war! Those 
brave men who wore the gray have added imperishable glory to 
American valor — they are among the immortals. In song, in story. 



Josephits Daniels. 147 

in marble, in bronze, they live and will forever live, enshrined in 
the affections of their countrymen. 

But, men and brethren, the race of heroes in the South who 
bore the heat and burden of the day from the surrender until the 
black tide of reconstruction receded — those men sleep in unforgotten 
graves and their deeds of daring have too often been regarded 
as the rash actions of impulse and reckless men. Some of them 
belonged to the Ku-Klux Klan in its first days, when that or some 
like organization was as necessary for law and order as Crom- 
well's dismissal of the Rump Parliament was essential to England's 
peace and safety. These men, many of them reared in affluence, 
living then in self-denying poverty, opened the public schools of 
the South, gathered together the children, and laid in tears and 
faith the foundation of the edifice you are laboring to bring to 
turreted perfection. ^hi 

Instead of dwelling upon statistics of illiteracy and the like — 
painful facts that have the highest import and which stimulate to 
greater efforts — I challenge the whole world to parallel what the 
South has done for public education out of empty public treasuries 
and depleted private purses. You say it could have done more? 
Yes, and it would to-day have been richer if it had mortgaged the 
future to do more, but it has done more under adverse conditions 
than any people in all the history of mankind, and its motto is the 
command of Moses : " Go forward." 

All honor to every man, North and South, whatever his political 
or religious creed, who holds up the hands of the men and women 
whose work is bringing about that glad day when a good teacher, 
a good school and a long terrn will be within the reach of every child 
south of Mason and Dixon's line. (Applause.) 

But the South is still poor. I know that this will be denied 
by those who take a superficial view or think all the South is as 
rich as the Carolina truck gardens, the Virginia cities, the Texas 
oil wells, or the Alabama coal fields. The South is growing richer 
every day. It is developing its resources, its young men have gone 
to work in the factory, the mine, the field; on every hand you see 
evidences of prosperity. The future of the South industrially is 
assured. Out of the poverty of war, out of the disaster of recon- 
struction, by twenty years of well-directed industry, it has built 
large cities and established great industries. But, while it has done 



148 The Conference for Education. 

wonders in these short years and laid the foundation for greater 
prosperity, the South is relatively still poor. The Southern Edu- 
cator says that 1,000,000 people live in log houses in Georgia. In 
every state there are thousands whose incomes are so small as to 
make everything beyond the common necessities of life impossible. 
There are fewer of these every year, thanks to the building of rail- 
roads which open new markets and avenues of wealth, and the 
varied industrial development which is blessing the South. But it 
will be generations before the South catches up with other sections 
of the Republic, and recovers from the losses of war and reconstruc- 
tion. But she will do it. Her sons are strong, robust, industrious, 
confident, self-reliant, ready and willing to work with head and 
hand. In the face of all the progress it is making, I know it is not 
popular to say that the South is poor, but those who are acquainted 
with the rural conditions know that, while grinding poverty has 
passed, the bulk of the people have succeeded as yet in making but 
small accumulations. 

The third obstacle has been the lack of trained teachers and the 
lack of incentive to capable men to become teachers. 

Most of the male teachers between 1865 and 1880 were Con- 
federate soldiers, many of them teaching to secure bread. They 
had gone into the army from schools in which they had but begun 
their education. With one leg or one arm gone, they were unfit, 
when the war was over, for the manual labor which their comrades 
undertook. Equipped with meagre education, but rigid discipline, 
they taught the children the three " r's," and in the recess delighted 
them with stories of the war. 

I knew such a teacher, big of heart and brave as a lion, who left 
a leg at Gettysburg, who was one of the most popular teachers 
in his community. He knew how to maintain discipline, he could 
teach, and teach thoroughly — up to partial payments — and he could 
describe a battle with such graphic vividness as to make the hair 
of his pupils stand on end. For twenty dollars a month, for three 
months in the year, that noble soldier was the pioneer post-bellum 
leader in public education in his neighborhood. He would not shine 
in a teachers' institute, but he taught the rudiments thoroughly and 
sowed the seed from which this generation is reaping. (Applause.) 

The short terms and low salaries have not encouraged men and 
women to become teachers, but the call to teach has in every year 



Josephus Daniels. 149 

been heard and heeded by thousands, who have found a compensa- 
tion that is priceless in the love and gratitude of their students. 
And so, though the pay has been small, the schools have been 
manned by teachers worth ten times the salary that they received. 
Better normal instruction has provided better teachers, the growing 
prosperity has multiplied graded schools, which have offered better 
inducements to teachers, and this obstacle of the lack of trained 
teachers is year by year disappearing. 

People who live in compact communities can have little appre- 
ciation of the obstacle to adequate public schools to be found in a 
sparse population. In the mountains and in the low country, the 
population is widely scattered, and it is where the people live farthest 
apart the least progress has been made. But even where the environ- 
ment makes strongest against progress, the people are becoming 
aroused to the necessity of better schools and longer terms, and are 
bridging swamps and climbing mountains to give their sons and 
daughters a better chance in life. 

So much for the obstacles. You may think I have dwelt too 
much upon them and left too little time to give the details of 
progress. You are already — the world is already — familiar with 
the statistics of illiteracy, the figures showing appropriations for 
schools, and the general spirit of enthusiasm and hope that pervades 
the South. I have dwelt upon the serious obstacles because I have 
often thought that in some quarters the South has been too harshly 
judged by men who read nothing but statistics. 

I am somewhat skeptical as to some of the figures that are so 
often paraded. The conditions are better than these seem to indi- 
cate. It is not always well to accept statistics as the finality. Carroll 
D. Wright wasn't so very far wrong when he said, " There are three 
kinds of liars in the world — just the simple, plain, every-day liars, 
D n'd liars, and statisticians." 

I am more familiar with North Carolina — its improvement as 
indicated by official figures and in the changed and improved and 
improving public sentiment — and will confine myself to the devel- 
opment in that state, which has the distinction of being a leader in 
this and other progressive educational movements. The story of 
North Carolina fairly tells the story of progress of all the Southern 
states. I confine myself, therefore, to that one state. 

I can remember (and I am still young enough to be counted 



150 The Conference for Education. 

among " the boys") when there was not a single city, town or village 
or a school district in North Carolina that levied a special tax for 
public schools, and at that time the general school tax provided a 
fund that afforded only the most inefHcient short-term schools. 

The first town that voted a local tax for graded schools was 
Greensboro in 1874. To-day there are seventy-eight local tax dis- 
tricts that support their public schools by public taxation, quite a 
number of country districts are doing so, and, within the past year, 
a large number of towns and school districts have voted a local 
tax to establish graded schools. The legislature of 1903 passed more 
special acts for establishing graded schools and erecting public 
school buildings than ever before in the history of the state. 

But these figures in themselves do not adequately convey the 
real progress. Many school districts have been consolidated — that 
work is going on every month, wisely and rapidly — and this is all 
preparatory to an accelerated increase in the number of districts that 
will, within the next few years, vote a special tax to improve the 
public schools in village and in rural district, for almost every town 
of any importance now has its graded school, supported by taxation. 

A concrete example in one growing town will illustrate the 
new and better condition in the whole state. It was my good for- 
tune to grow up in the village in eastern North Carolina that had the 
best private schools and academies in that section of the state. 
Twenty-five years ago — I was a very small boy then — in the town 
of Wilson, there was a flourishing woman's seminary and a prosper- 
ous academy for boys and young men. They attracted students from 
twenty counties, and had famous instructors and splendid wooden 
buildings. But the public school, open only about two months, dur- 
ing the vacation of the private schools, was taught in an abandoned 
carriage factory. The teachers were good, but the crowded classes 
and short terms made the public school largely a failure. Few 
parents who could pay tuition thought of depending upon them. A 
magnificent brick building, costing $50,000, has been erected for a 
useful and strong denominational college. The people have recently 
built a $35,000 brick building for its excellent public graded school 
for white children. Commodious and well-equipped buildings had 
previously been erected for the graded schools for the negro children. 

The change in most other communities has been even more 
marked, for in many there were only indifferent and small private 



Josephus Daniels. 151 

schools, before the estabHshment of graded schools. In those a 
transformation greater and more uplifting than any array of figures 
would indicate has been wrought, for the influence of these schools 
of democracy has touched every phase of community life to bless it. 

The progress in what we call higher education has been most 
gratifying. In 1875 the doors of the State University — the oldest 
and one of the foremost institutions of learning in the South, with 
an illustrious history — were closed. Only one college had a dollar 
of endowment and that had been seriously impaired by war. In 
1875 only about three hundred young men were matriculated in all 
the colleges. To-day there are not less than twenty-five hundred. 

Within the past fifteen years the state has established two great 
industrial institutions — the A. and M. College for white boys at 
Raleigh and the A. and M. College for colored boys at Greensboro. 
The aggregate appropriations and expenditures at both have been 
three-quarters of a million dollars. At Greensboro the state has 
established for women the State Normal and Industrial College, the 
success of which has been almost phenomenal. It represents the 
expenditure of more than half a million dollars in ten years. The 
appropriation from the state treasury has been increased from 
$12,500 to $40,000 a year. The state has added largely to the 
institution for the blind at Raleigh, and erected commodious and 
modern buildings for a model school for the deaf and dumb children 
at Morgantown, costing $200,000. Private benefaction has con- 
structed five new buildings at the University, at a cost of over 
$200,000. The appropriations from the state treasury for the Uni- 
versity, which reopened in 1876 with a state appropriation of $7,500 
per year, have been increased to $37,500 per year. Eight normal 
schools for the training of teachers for the negro schools are main- 
tained by the state at locations convenient and accessible. 

The private academies and preparatory schools ( North Carolina 
from its earliest history has always been blessed with a few private 
schools worthy to rank with the best in England or New England) 
have multiplied in numbers and attendance, doing a great and 
needed work, filling the gap between the public schools and the 
colleges. 

The denominational colleges have gone forward steadily and 
rapidly. The endowment in one alone, Trinity College, coming 
almost wholly from two men— father and son— has grown to some- 



152 The Conference for Education. 

thing like half a million. Wake Forest has increased to a quarter 
of a million ; Davidson to a quarter of a million ; Elon, during the 
past year, received a handsome donation. The endowments in the 
denominational colleges for women have not been so great, but these 
colleges have shown a growth that tells mightily the story of the 
belief in educating women that has been the distinguishing educa- 
tional characteristic of the state during the past ten years. New 
colleges for women have been established and have grown to great 
usefulness in a single year. 

Among the most important forward steps that the state has 
lately taken, I must name three. 

1. The legislature has now for four years made an appropri- 
ation of $100,000 a year, out of the general funds, to be applied to 
the schools in the poorer counties whose revenues are not sufficient 
to bring their school terms up to the constitutional requirement. 

2. It has made appropriations of $12,500 for free rural libraries 
in connection with the public schools, which, supplemented by the 
counties and private subscriptions, will amount to $37,500. 

3. The general assembly, which adjourned last month, recog- 
nizing that the pressing need in public education is better school- 
houses, upon the recommendation of the state's able and wise 
superintendent of schools, one of the first educators in wisdom 
and in executive ability in America to-day, set aside the sum of 
$200,000 and all funds hereafter arising from the sale of thousands 
of acres of public lands belonging to the state, to be a " Permanent 
Loan Fund for Building and Improving Public Schoolhouses." 
The State Board of Education is directed to lend this money at 
4 per cent to school districts which have not the money to build 
schoolhouses, to be repaid in ten annual instalments. This sum will 
be used to supplement local appropriations and contributions. If 
it could be doubled and the entire school fund, a large part of 
which has necessarily been used to build schoolhouses, could be 
used exclusively to employ teachers, the good result which we confi- 
dently expect in ten years, would be accomplished within one year. 
I believe this is the most important step taken in public education 
in any Southern state. You cannot secure a full attendance without 
comfortable schoolhouses. Good schoolhouses must be at the 
foundation of all permanent progress in public education. The 
loan fund established by North Carolina has the germ of the best 



Josephus Daniels. 153 

work possible of early accomplishment that philanthropists and 
legislators can undertake. (Applause.) 

These facts tell in outline the story of the educational progress 
in North Carolina, as far as it can be told by brick, mortar, statutes 
and appropriations. These are the visible signs of the revival that 
has, like a living fire, touched the minds and hearts of the people 
of the state. But as the spirit is always superior to the material, 
these facts and figures cannot convey the full story of the wonderful 
progress that this generation has witnessed. That story will be 
found in the newer life of intellectual and industrial activity that 
dominates the South to-day and that will lead it into larger fields 
in the days that are to come. (Applause.) 

North Carolina's contribution to the educational revival is found 
mainly within the state, for the true Tar-heel is ever mindful of the 
injunction, " Beginning at Jerusalem." Perhaps we stay there too 
long and preach too much only to the saints. But North Carolina 
has furnished educational leaders, not only for its own schools and 
colleges, but has furnished educational leaders also for the South and 
elsewhere. Page, of New York ; Alderman, of Louisiana ; Branson, of 
Georgia ; Pell, of South Carolina ; Barringer, of Virginia ; Houston, 
of Texas, all prominently connected with this conference and its 
work, are natives of North Carolina, while Woodrow Wilson spent 
his boyhood in Wilmington ; and Dabney and Claxton, of Tennessee ; 
D. B. Johnston, of South Carolina ; J. D. Eggleston, Jr., of Virginia, 
and other leaders in this movement, began the work of their early 
manhood and retained their citizenship in North Carolina long 
enough to be indoctrinated with proper ideas of educational leader- 
ship. Its present governor, Charles B. Aycock, and Georgia's fore- 
most citizen, Hoke Smith, were both born in North Carolina. Among 
public leaders in the educational progress of to-day, the names of 
these two North Carolinians " lead all the rest." 

To-day, with this backward glance at what has been accom- 
plished in spite of the negro burden, the swamps, and mountains, 
the sparseness of population, the lack of trained teachers, and pov- 
erty. North Carolinians, having come up out of great tribulations, 
and rejoicing that they have reached Appi Forum, thank God and 
take courage. That good state is happy in that, though the harvest 
is great, it is ripe for the sickle and the laborers are not few. 

Among the causes of congratulation to-day is the fact that at 



154 The Conference for Education. 

last the South has the sympathy and the co-operation of the most 
patriotic and broad-minded men of the Republic — men who are 
moved by the highest motives and the purest patriotism in their 
interest in Southern education. (Applause.) 

I bring to you, gentlemen of the North, the greetings of the 
Southern press — and, speaking for the thoughtful men and women 
of the South, as well as its thousands of children whose welfare you 
are promoting, I thank you for the noble work you are doing and 
for your helpful and inspiring sympathy. I beg you not to accept 
the criticisms of a few newspapers not representative of the true 
Southern sentiment or the dominant political thought, as voicing in 
any material degree the opinions of the Southern people. People 
and press are in accord with the spirit and purposes of this Con- 
ference ; they wish it God-speed and hold in grateful esteem the 
men and women who feel that the burden which the South has been 
bearing alone is the concern of men in every section of the Republic. 

The annual coming together of representative educators, busi- 
ness men and leaders of the North and South can have none other 
than good results. You of the North will learn of us. We of the 
South will learn of you. All the wisdom does not find a habitation 
in the North or in the South. You Northern gentlemen are doing 
the country a great service by teaching your friends and neighbors 
a saner view of Southern conditions. We do not ask you to change 
your politics or your convictions. In this connection I wish to thank 
Mr. Ogden for his timely protest, in the Union League, against 
joining in an onslaught upon the purified Southern suffrage laws, 
and his warm commendation of Mr. Cleveland's wise views upon 
the negro question. In these two actions Mr. Ogden has won the 
commendation of the whole South, and shown that no mistake was 
made when he was chosen president of this Conference. 

We of the South, also, can learn much by contact with Northern 
thinkers and workers. We should remember that all the radical and 
extreme views are not north of Mason and Dixon's line, and we 
need the contact of thoughtful, broad-minded men and women out- 
side our section, as every other section needs the same thing. 

When this class of people from all sections comes together to 
discuss any great question, and will discuss it with right motives 
and charity for honest differences of opinion, good and good only 
will follow for to-day, to-morrow, forever. (Applause.) 



W. B. Merritt. 155 

President Ogden : — I have some notices, if the chairman will 
kindly give me two minutes to myself. When we have a good thing 
for our instruction or amusement, we have no right to keep it to 
ourselves, in personal possession, or hide its light under a bushel. 
Dr. Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University, started a 
little story in New York the other day which I think has not 
reached here yet, and it so thoroughly applies to what the last 
speaker has said to us and so thoroughly applies to what we want 
to do that I want two minutes to tell the story. It happened a long 
time ago that Dr. Wilson went up into the mountains of North 
Carolina to have a little recreation in that air full of champagne. 
Meeting there a mountaineer, the following conversation ensued. 
The mountaineer said : " Wal, I suppose some of you fellers down 
in the fiat part of the state thet hez been to the great institutions 
of larning know some things we don't know?" "Yes," said Dr. 
Wilson, " that is undoubtedly true." " Then, too, we uns up hyar 
knows lots of things you uns don't know." " Yes," Dr. Wilson said, 
" that is true, too." And then came the truth that fits us exactly. 
The mountaineer said : " Wal, then mixin' larns both." (Applause.) 

The Chairman : — Having had an interesting address from 
North Carolina, we now move on to Georgia, under the leadership 
of the Hon. W. B. Merritt, state superintendent of public instruc- 
tion, who will speak to us of " The Work in Georgia." 

Educational Work in Georgia. 
By Hon. W. B. Merritt, State Superintendent. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I regret very much 
that Dr. Mclver did not have time to finish his report on the work 
in Georgia. We would like to have the figures he could give you 
from his report; and we Georgians present, numbering about fifty 
or sixty, would like to see them and compare our statistics and 
growth with other states. 

Along with the other states of this section of the Union, we 
have drawbacks in our educational work that are common to all. We 
need better houses, better trained teachers, and better tax laws for 
school purposes. I would like, if time permitted, to give you some 
of the details of the efforts made along these lines. For several 
years this work has gone on, and next year we propose to make one 
of the greatest campaigns for education that Georgia has ever known. 



156 The Conference for Education. 

The most serious drawback we have at present is the practical 
bar to the local school tax under our present constitution. At present 
it requires two-thirds of the voters registered at the previous elec- 
tion to pass, in a county, a local school tax. A bill has already 
passed in the Senate and will pass the House in a few months, 
allowing the people to vote to change our constitution. Before 
many months have passed it will be easier to secure a local tax in 
Georgia. Dr. Mclver declares this new law requiring two-thirds 
of the votes cast to be better than the North Carolina law. We 
have felt for some time that our law is not liberal, adequate, or fair ; 
we have felt that this almost constitutional prohibition has hindered 
our progress ; but our people are resting on their oars, so to speak, 
this year; when our law will permit it, we can secure a local tax in 
many counties. There is slowly crystallizing the sentiment we so 
much need — a strong sentiment for a local tax. 

We are doing some work in the way of consolidation of schools 
and teacher training. I wish I had time to tell you the great work 
that is being done by our state normal schools. The teachers there 
are somewhat discouraged at the great numbers of applicants and 
the small room in which we have to take care of them. I think that 
the meager support that the state has been giving these institutions 
is probably intended to give some lessons to these teachers in the 
virtues of self-sacrifice and endurance, and it may be a blessing in 
disguise. 

We have been doing some work in consolidation. I think we 
ought to proceed carefully in that, and, as Superintendent Stetson, 
of Maine, says, " Let's let the patrons feel they are doing the work." 
We want to get him down in Georgia, we want to adopt him for a 
season. To draw a figure from his own maple tree, we want to 
" tap" him for educational enthusiasm. 

I want to report to you one instance of consolidation that has 
recently occurred that I wish I might hold up to every community 
in the Southern states. We have in Carroll County a young man 
who, a few years ago, was at the University of Georgia. Last year 
he had an opportunity to attend the Conference at Athens, and 
there he got the inspiration of a teacher's work, there he got the 
idea of consolidation, and he went away from that Conference 
determined to do something for his own people in the schoolroom. 
He has combined three schools; he has bought a modern school 



IV . B. Merritt. 157 

wagon to transport the children. One thing that struck me is the 
business capacity of this young man ; he has rented one hundred 
and twenty acres of land near the school, with a dwelling-house on it 
to accommodate the pupils of his consolidated school, because he 
needed more room; he has sub-rented some of the farm; and by 
allowing his driver to plow thirty acres with his mules, he will 
feed his mules and pay rent for them, clear of all expense to his 
patrons. There is a shining example of carrying business ideas into 
school work. (Applause.) 

You ask me what I feel now is our greatest need, besides these 
matters I have just mentioned, of local tax, consolidation and good 
teachers. I should say we want a sentiment that will bring into our 
schoolrooms people of better business ability, teachers of business 
capacity. We have had some examples in our state recently of 
women of means and of high character going out in the country 
districts and establishing model schools. I wish we could have a 
model school in every county in Georgia. (Applause.) We want 
young men and young women who will devote themselves to this 
work. At several large religious conventions I have heard the dis- 
cussions as to the lack of young men who were offering themselves 
for the ministry; and while they talked upon that, I felt that we 
wanted young men of talent and ability to enter educational work. 
(Applause.) I am so glad that this young man to whom I referred 
was at the Conference last year ; he will benefit that county, he will 
benefit the whole state by the inspiration he received at the Athens 
Conference. (Applause.) I trust there are here to-day other young 
men and women — they may not be yet out of school or college — 
who have their minds turned to educational work. I was rejoiced 
beyond expression to hear that beautiful tribute paid by Dr. McKel- 
way to our noble Southern hero of past days. In connection with 
those beautiful traits of character which he mentioned, it is timely 
and inspiring to recall the fact that instead of going into other lines 
of work, even refusing a salary of $20,000 a year as president of an 
insurance company. General Robert E. Lee chose the poorly paid 
and laborious work of an instructor of the youth of the impover- 
ished South. (Applause.) 

I am glad that this Conference is reaching out and inspiring 
young men of talent with the idea that educational work is one of 
the greatest fields they can enter. 



158 The Conference for Education. 

I would like to call your attention to an article recently published 
in regard to the schools of. Georgia, in the April number of the 
Review of Reviews, written by Dr. Cloyd. That article will be a 
great campaign document for us next year. He has gone down 
there and shown us things that we did not know. He has shown 
us things that will help us. I am glad he has written that article. 
Our teachers all over the state are reading it. It will help us 
secure local tax for schools. His criticisms will stimulate our 
teachers. I would like to tell you what a wonderful inspiration it 
has been for him to be with us, and for Dr. Buttrick to be with us. 

I sent out to every school in Georgia test questions. I am try- 
ing to find out something about the teaching. The teachers in 
Georgia do not know when test questions, or a school critic, or a 
kodak is coming along. This turning on of the light will help us 
greatly. The educational influences are being felt like the influence 
of this balmy springtime. The people are awakening. I am glad 
the newspapers are responding. Some people and papers may take 
the other side of the question and oppose progress in education. 
Away down in one corner of a county in Georgia a candidate for 
sheriff met a citizen of the county who didn't take much interest 
in politics usually. The candidate said : " I want you to vote for 
me ; all the people in this district will vote for me ; John Brown, 
your neighbor, will vote for me." The citizen replied : " If John 
Brown is going to vote for you, I'm agin you." Now there are 
some papers of that kind ; they are " agin" anything that the other 
papers favor. 

I am glad of the interest it is awakening. Dr. Hall tells us 
most truly, that our people really do not know how much value 
there is in a boy. 

I am glad that this Conference comes to the South. If you don't 
go to Alabama next year, we will be glad for you to come to Georgia. 

The people of Georgia will always be glad to confer and co-oper- 
ate with you in encouraging the growth of school sentiment and 
education. The purest patriotism and philanthropy look across state 
lines for opportunities to uplift humanity. The results of any good 
work are not entirely local. Many promising and capable young 
men have gone from Georgia to build up the commercial and other 
interests of another state whose capitalists and philanthropists have 
made liberal investments in the commercial and educational enter- 



D. F. Houston. 159 

prises of our state. Some years ago one of these generous men, 
a resident of New York state, made liberal donations to the college 
in Georgia from which I was graduated. When his generous gifts 
to several schools in the South were known to the public, one of his 
friends asked why he did not bestow his wealth on institutions of his 
own section. His reply, which is written on the frame of his por- 
trait, hanging in the chapel of my Alma Mater, made a deep 
impression on my mind : " They also are my people, — we are one 
people." 

The Chairman : — We regret that Dr. David F. Houston, who 
was to speak at this time, is unable to attend. Dr. Houston is well 
known throughout the South for his remarkable work as the presi- 
dent of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. He 
has been detained by certain important issues now pending before 
the legislature of his state. [At the request of the editor, Dr. Hous- 
ton kindly contributes his paper to this volume, and it is here 
printed.] 

The Education of Farmers. 

By D. F. Houston, LL.D., President of the Agricultural and- Mechanical 

College of Texas. 

Dr. Houston: — The problem of the education of farmers in 
the South is the problem of the education of two-thirds of our entire 
population. By occupation approximately 62 per cent of our people 
are actively engaged in farming, while only 15 per cent are engaged 
in domestic service, 8 per cent in trade and transportation, less than 
13 per cent in manufacturing, and 2j^ per cent in the professions. 
In the larger sense the problem is the education of 80 per cent of 
our people, since that proportion lives in rural communities. 

To a certain extent, the problem of the education of farmers is 
merely the problem of education in its general and universal aspects. 
It is the problem of making adequate provision for imparting 
information, for furnishing intellectual training and discipline, and 
for stimulating development and self-control. Towards the solu- 
tion of the problem in its general aspects, some approach has been 
made through our private and public secondary schools, and col- 
leges and universities, but at best it is only an approach. In our 
towns and cities, it is true, something like an approximation to a 
satisfactory condition has been attained, but in our rural districts 
our system is still in its infancy. In regard to our public schools 



i6o The Conference for Education. 

we practice much deception upon ourselves. If we provide a school- 
house^and a teacher, we allow ourselves to think that we have done 
our duty. The fact that the schoolhouse is dilapidated and unsightly, 
that the equipment is inadequate, that the teacher knows little and is 
badly paid for what he does know, that the school closes before the 
students are well under way,— these things seem to give little con- 
cern. Our consciences are appeased. 

But, looking the matter squarely in the face, we may well ask 
ourselves if we are acting in this matter seriously and with real 
appreciation of its importance. " The most sacred thing in the com- 
monwealth and to the commonwealth," says the author of tihe 
" Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths," and the editor of great maga- 
zines, Dr. Walter H. Page, " is the child, whether it be your child 
or the child of the dull-faced mother of the hovel. The child of 
the dull-faced mother may, for all you know, be the more capable 
of good citizenship and a useful life, if its intelligence be quickened 
and trained. . . . The child, whether it has poor parents or 
rich parents, is the most valuable undeveloped resource of the state." 
Whether we realize it or not, we live mainly for our children. We 
work for them, we suffer for them. If necessary, we die for them. 
We willingly give our last dollar to an able lawyer to protect them 
from disgrace, or to a skillful physician to save their lives, but 
we are content to employ any sort of teacher, grudgingly furnishing 
our meager share of his small salary, to train them how to live and 
how to work, how to guard themselves against disgrace and disease. 
No cheaper way under the sun has yet been discovered to educate 
children than through state or community effort. The aggregate 
amount spent seems large, but, when we figure it out, it is an 
amazingly small amount that each taxpayer actually contributes for 
public education. When we take the aggregate of the income from 
lands and from taxes, we find that the ten Southern States spend an 
average of only $2.56 for every child of school age in the state, or 
only $4.30 for every child actually enrolled. Consequently, our 
schools only run 99.4 days in the year on the average. The equipment 
is inadequate, salaries are low, and there is little inducement to 
teachers to improve themselves, or inducements to really able men 
and women to pursue teaching as a career. 

Talk as you will, criticise as you like, invent methods until 
your ingenuity is exhausted, we shall not solve our educational 



D. F. Houston. i6i 

problem until we provide through community taxation four or five 
times as much revenue as is now available. The problem in its 
larger aspects is a financial problem. 

It will not do to say that the South is not able to meet the 
burden, that it cannot afford it. The State of Missouri spends 
nearly $17 a year for each pupil, Indiana $20, Michigan $20, Wis- 
consin $21, Minnesota nearly $30, North Dakota nearly $34, Mary- 
land $22, California $35, Colorado $38, and Texas $10. But I 
refuse to discuss expenditure for education as if it were a burden, 
so much money given up and lost, an unproductive expenditure. 
As a matter of fact, it is an investment, a productive expenditure, 
yielding the largest direct and indirect results. We have long held 
it as an axiom that education is the bulwark of liberty and the pre- 
requisite of republican government. In fact, we have proclaimed 
this so often that it has become a meaningless and glittering gener- 
ality. But it is none the less intrinsically an unalterable truth. And 
no less is it true that education is the only certain guarantee of 
social development and of individual advancement. Right educa- 
tion, every thoughtful statesman and trained economist agrees, alone 
furnishes the ultimate solution of labor problems, the hope for social 
and individual betterment and the increase in the share of each 
individual in the world's output of wealth. Wages are dependent 
upon efficiency, and efficiency upon right training. If time per- 
mitted, I could cite dozens of cases of individuals whose experience 
absolutely confirms the truth of this proposition, and I could point 
you to thousands of men in our state, of great natural, physical, and 
intellectual strength, whose lives are lives of poverty, because they 
have never been educated, have never been trained to do any par- 
ticular thing in a skillful way. They do not know what to turn 
their energies to, and they would not be prepared to enter upon the 
tasks if you were to point them out. 

Expenditure for education, then, properly considered, is not 
a burden. There is nothing that we can better afford. In reality it 
is not a matter of ability to pay, it is a matter of understanding and 
disposition. In the apt words of the writer to whom I have referred, 
" the ability to maintain schools is in proportion rather to the appre- 
ciation of education than to the amount of wealth. We pay for 
schools not so much out of our purses as out of our state of mind. 
Let us see to it, then, that our dispositions are properly educated. 



i62 The Conference for Education. 

Let us concern ourselves more seriously about the training of our 
boys and girls, and let us realize clearly that if we are to do justice 
to our children, we must pay more taxes, and let us grasp the fact 
that this expenditure is not a burden but an investment." And it is 
the class particularly that lives in the country districts that must 
concern itself in this matter. If farmers would have good schools 
they must vote local taxes. The children of farmers are entitled to 
as much as those of any other class in the community, but their 
parents can secure it only by doing what other classes in the state 
are doing. They must help themselves. The town and the city 
will take care of their children. They furnish better opportunities to 
their children than rural districts do to theirs. To give their chil- 
dren what they deserve, farmers are compelled to send them to the 
city, with the result that their affections are divorced from the 
country. 

But if such a system of schools as I have indicated were pro- 
vided, only a partial approach to the solution of the problem of 
educating farmers would have been made. Very few people realize 
clearly how many characteristics of their aristocratic or mediaeval 
origin and aims our public-school courses of study reveal. Up to a 
comparatively recent time, education, even in our own country, was 
regarded as a special privilege of luxury of the rich or leisure class. 
This was especially the case in the South, whose social, industrial 
and political structure was essentially aristocratic. The masses of 
the people were forgotten, and if many had ambitions and aspira- 
tions, very few had the means or the opportunities. They accepted 
the situation and submitted to the condition of semi-paternalism or 
tutelage. They were content to have their thinking done for them 
and to be governed by the privileged class. A revolution overturned 
the social system and led to a rearrangement in the relations of man 
to man. But much of the social machinery, and especially the edu- 
cational, was slow to change. It may be asserted that our educa- 
tional system in the South is reasonably adequate for those who 
intend to enter the so-called polite professions, or who can afford to 
pursue a general culture course, relying on inherited wealth or 
opportunity for position and support. But for the great industrial 
class, composed of the farmer, the business man, and the mechanic, 
it is strikingly imperfect and unsatisfactory. If the great mass of 
our people had the time and means to continue their training through 



D. F. Houston. 163 

the college or the university, and then to pursue a special course 
fitting them to do particular things, the criticism would not hold. 
But it is obvious that no such course is open at present to 99 per 
cent of our population. There is to-day in the South an army of 
more than one million boys and girls between the ages of eighteen 
and twenty, but in all the colleges less than twenty thousand are 
enrolled. And it is a well-known fact that a comparatively insigni- 
ficant fraction finishes even the high school. The great body of our 
people must be trained in our secondary schools, and the great mass 
of our farmers must be trained in rural districts. 

I do not wish to be misunderstood. I would not say one word 
to the detriment of any class in society. I do not regard one class 
as better than any other class. Every great class that has made its 
place in society is essential to its existence, and every individual 
in each class, who is doing his work well, is entitled to our gratitude 
and admiration. Nor would I utter one word which would lessen 
the inclination to provide training for any class in society, or that 
would lessen in any degree the support for our higher institutions of 
learning. Each of these, from the university down, is an inherently 
necessary and vital part of our life. They all furnish an inspiration 
to our educational life ; and I desire to see them develop until the 
South has the equal of any in the Union and shall be able to furnish 
in her own borders the highest and best training for her young 
people. I am in favor of anything that educates. I am an advocate 
of all educational institutions, public or private, denominational or 
non-denominational. I am simply advocating more educatinon and, 
in particular, an education adapted to the needs of the vast majority 
of our people, the industrial classes. I am simply contending that 
this great class shall not be neglected and that our secondary schools 
shall look with jealous concern at its needs and shall introduce sub- 
jects having definite and practical bearing on their daily tasks. It 
will not do to go merely on the assumption that we are to turn out 
men. We assume that as a matter of course. But when we think 
clearly we realize that we cannot make men unless we make them 
efficient in the discharge of the daily tasks of the world. 

To be definite, I am contending that further provision be made 

in our secondary schools, and especially in our rural districts, for the 

fundamental subjects, especially the sciences underlying agriculture, 

,and that definite, theoretical and practical instruction be given in 



164 The Conference for Education. 

them in agriculture and manual training. And I am insisting that 
as adequate provision be made for the higher technical education of 
the farmer and of the mechanic as is made for the lawyer or the 
doctor or the teacher. 

But some will ask, Is this practicable? Perhaps there are still 
some so ignorant as to doubt the possibility of effectively teaching 
agriculture even in colleges, and absolutely certain that it cannot be 
taught in the public schools. About the possibility of teaching 
manual training there is now no longer any question. But, because 
it is such a common occupation and because of the notion that such 
training can be received only through actual experience, there is 
still skepticism in many quarters, and singularly enough more par- 
ticularly among men of high education along orthodox lines, as to 
whether anything can be taught in agriculture except on the farm. 
It must be confessed that the antics of many who have posed as 
educated men in agriculture justly furnished some ground for such 
skepticism, and much amusement to the hard-headed, sensible, prac- 
tical man of affairs. The trouble with these products of the new 
order was simply that they were not educated either by the college 
or by experience. They had the misfortune of being the subjects 
for experiments at the hands of institutions which were in the nature 
of things experiments themselves. 

It is not singular that agricultural colleges in all parts of the 
country for a long time, and in some parts of the country still fail, 
to accomplish their mission and to give general satisfaction. About 
1862 thoughtful men determined that something should be done for 
the farming class, and succeeded in establishing through land grants 
agricultural and mechanical colleges. And what a singular scene 
of confusion, impossible strivings, and pathetic gropings, in some 
cases of stagnation, was presented. Nobody knew just what was to 
be done. Nobody knew where to find men to show the way or what 
machinery and equipment were essential. The science of agriculture 
and its correct practice were non-existent. The institutions were 
filled with crude and immature boys, and nearly everything was 
taught except agriculture and the mechanic arts. With a sum of 
money scarcely sufficient to keep the property of the institution 
from going to rack, with low salaries and consequently inefficient 
teachers, without laboratory or shop equipment, with little money 
available for experimental purposes, with tumble-down barns, with 



D. F. Houston. 165 

no live stock, no orchards, no truck patches, the name of some of 
them became a by-word and a hindrance to progress. In some cases 
the authorities painfully realized the difficulties, struggled to make 
both ends meet, and were compelled to receive the criticism and dis- 
pleasure of those who alone were mainly responsible by reason of 
their failure to provide the revenue. 

By slow and painful process, however, these agricultural and 
mechanical colleges have, with varying degrees of rapidity, forged 
to the front. In the great Middle West these institutions have 
attained a high plane of development and are without doubt the 
most valuable, scientific and practical institutions in the land, con- 
tributing immeasurably to the production of wealth and adding to 
the dignity of industry and to human effort. In those states where 
the institutions are liberally and properly supported, nobody asks 
whether agriculture can be taught and whether farmers can be 
educated. They know it because they see it and have had it them- 
selves. 

With adequate provision I know this education can be given 
in a large way by the agricultural and mechanical colleges of the 
South through their various agencies, and I am no less sure that 
it can be given in a reasonably efficient degree in our rural schools. 
Why should the teaching of the elements of agriculture not be pos- 
sible in our secondary schools? Agriculture rests upon the most 
exact sciences, upon physics, chemistry, botany and biology. It is 
more scientific than ethics, or moral philosophy, than political 
economy or pedagogy. To teach a country boy something about 
soil and its mechanical properties, something about how plants grow, 
with the great laboratory of nature all round, is easier than to teach 
him Greek; to teach him something about making cold frames and 
hot-beds, about pruning and grafting, is easier than to teach him 
Latin; and to teach him something about stock feeding and stock 
breeding and something about the construction of barns is easier 
than to teach him physics out of a text-book or astronomy without 
a telescope. For such things he has a large background of expe- 
rience. They appeal to him, and if taught to him would tend to hold 
him in school and diminish his eagerness to get into active life, 
because he would realize that he was already in active life, in appren- 
ticeship for his later larger duties. 

If these things are so, it is high time public opinion was being 



1 66 The Conference for Education. 

molded, that work were being done upon and through trustees, and 
that demand were being made for teachers competent to give the 
instruction required. The change must of necessity come slowly, 
and it must come without tearing down what we have built up. It 
must be largely by way of addition, through more liberal provisions. 
By consolidating schools or by employing competent teachers who 
could visit different schools in rotation daily or weekly, or even 
monthly, following methods that are successful in Canada or in some 
of our states, a beginning can certainly be made. The initial diffi- 
culty will be experienced in securing a sufficient number of efficiently 
trained teachers, but the supply of any commodity, including labor, 
will always adjust itself to the demand, and if you will demand it, 
and offer the money, you may depend upon it with absolute assurance 
that men and women will train themselves to teach agriculture. I 
have no fears upon this point. 

But the training of our boys and girls in the rural districts, 
through the secondary schools, for their lifework is not the whole 
solution. There will be those who will need, and must of necessity 
have, such instruction as the agricultural and mechanical colleges 
furnish; and then there is the large and urgently practical question 
of enlightening and training those actually engaged in the business 
of farming. In the solution of this problem we have made a begin- 
ning and are clearly on the right road. We have devised and are 
perfecting a complex but efficient machinery. The agencies are 
numerous. In the first place there is the press. It would be difficult 
to overrate the value of the contributions made by our general daily 
and weekly papers, but beside these the South is unusually fortunate 
in possessing a considerable number of strong technical agricultural 
and stock papers. These have done heroic pioneer work and are 
increasing in power and influence. And in passing I must remark 
that the railroads of the South have done and are doing a great 
work for agriculture and other industries, and are spending vastly 
more time and money than the average citizen dreams of. If time 
permitted I should like to indicate at some length and note the extent 
of their contributions, but I must hasten. 

Upon the vastly important and efficient work being done by the 
Federal Government through the trained experts in the Department 
of Agriculture, I shall not dwell. It has given new dignity to agri- 
culture as a science and as an art and has pointed the way to pros- 



D. F. Houston. 167 

parity in many directions and wonderfully increased and stimulated 
the farmers of the country. 

But of special importance are the agricultural and mechanical 
colleges, supported partly by Federal and partly by state grants. It 
would not be possible in a few words to present the varied activities 
of these institutions, the processes by which they train students in 
agriculture, horticulture, live stock, dairying, and the mechanic arts, 
or the methods they pursue in desseminating information among 
farmers. Their work involves a combination of the theoretical and 
practical, of the lecture system and of investigations in the labora- 
tory, of shop practice and of field experiments. It would be impos- 
sible for me to make you realize how their work has been crippled 
because of inadequate facilities in all departments. For a long time 
the situation was discouraging to the most hopeful among us ; but 
a brighter day has dawned. Legislatures have become more lib- 
eral ; more men and better trained men and ampler facilities are 
being provided, and the day is not far distant when these institutions 
in the South will rank with those in the great Middle West. 

Texas is the first of the Southern States to make a long step 
forward. Her legislature appropriated for all purposes, for two 
3^ears, to the Agricultural and Mechanical College, the generous sum 
of $375,000. This institution receives in addition from the Federal 
Government, for the same period, the sum of $95,000. For the 
Industrial College for Negroes the legislature likewise made liberal 
provision, appropriating more than $60,000. The authorities of 
these colleges have carefully planned for the expenditure of these 
amounts. They have raised and enriched the courses of study, 
making them strictly technological. They have added more courses 
in agriculture, dairying, mycology, agricultural chemistry, entomol- 
ogy, electrical engineering and textile engineering. They have let 
the contract for a new commodious model dairy barn, and planned 
to build and equip a $25,000 building for textile engineering, have 
arranged for the addition of more than $30,000 worth of shop, labo- 
ratory and farm equipment, and have undertaken extensive repairs 
and improvements on buildings and grounds. The college has 
increased its mailing list from 7,000 to 20,000, and intends to run 
it up to 40,000 or 50,000 at least, so that it may reach progressive 
farmers in every community in the state; and it has asserted that 
what it wants within its walls is a large body of young men of 



1 68 The Conference for Education. 

serious purpose who really desire an education in agriculture or 
engineering, and nothing else. It has proclaimed emphatically that 
while the instruction of these young people is a serious and solemn 
duty, its larger mission at present is to assist and instruct the great 
mass of actual farmers and mechanics, and it will pursue with 
increasing vigor experiments designed to help them, will dissemi- 
nate information through the press, through bulletins, and, best of 
all, will attempt to bring the latest and best thought and practice in 
all these lines to the actual farmer through the medium of farmers' 
institutes. 

Through such instrumentalities the rebuilding of our Southern 
commonwealths is being accomplished. With better support for 
these agencies, with well-equipped universities, with a more richly 
endowed and remodeled public-school system, the South will take 
on new life and contribute vastly more than she has in the past 
toward the industrial growth and the higher civilization of our 
common country. 

The Chairman : — The concluding address of the morning will 
be delivered by Dr. J. H. Kirkland, chancellor of Vanderbilt Uni- 
versity, at Nashville, Tennessee. He will now speak to us on " The 
Teacher and the State." (Applause.) 

The Teacher and the State. 
By Dr. J. H. Kirkdand, of Nashville, Tennessee. 

The attention of this Conference at its successive meetings 
during past years has been largely fixed on one problem — the need of 
universal primary education. No one will maintain that this need 
has been unduly emphasized or immoderately pressed. Every inves- 
tigation that has been made has helped to establish the fact that a 
shameful degree of illiteracy prevails in the South among both the 
white and black races. That this degree of illiteracy is not so bad 
as it might be, or not so bad as it has been, does not content us. 
Honesty and candor compel us to admit that the present condition of 
education, especially so far as regards the white population of the 
South, is discreditable to us as a people and is without satisfactory 
excuse. We cannot excuse the deficiencies of 1903 by the history of 
1863. (Applause.) Our wilderness has not lasted forty years; in 
this time we have passed from desolation to plenty and two genera- 



/. H. Kirkland. 169 

tions have grown to manhood. But the true historian will always 
find in the past an explanation, if not an excuse, for the present, and 
so it is in this case. 

Perhaps the most terrible feature of the great struggle through 
which the South passed was the depression that followed. Our 
people were face to face, not only with the ashes of their homes and 
the graves of their dead, but with the wreck and ruin of the whole 
social fabric which they had built up. In the desolation of that hour 
they felt stunned and bewildered. Their faces were set to the past 
and their hearts refused to be comforted ; as the sea bird with broken 
wing disdains the fields of plenty and stalks the barren shore, with 
eye ever fixed on the ocean wave that was its home, and from which 
an unkind fate has driven it. For this attitude the South has been 
judged severely and harshly, and yet it was entirely natural. The 
next important fact to be remembered is the extreme impoverishment 
of the South. This was not a passing discomfort of a few years, but 
the fixed status of this section for twenty long years. During this 
period the assessed valuation of property steadily declined from 
more than five thousand million dollars to less than two thousand 
million. No wonder we talk about the new South ; of the old South 
nothing was left save its barren hillsides washed and scarred by 
four years of neglect. Statistics do not help much here. To 
strangers they tell but little, and we who passed through that period 
do not need them; our memories need no reminder. We know 
what it means to enter into association with those heavenly powers 
whose fellowship, as Goethe tells us, can only be attained by those 
who have eaten their bread with tears and spent the solitary watches 
of the night in silent suffering. I would not dwell on these things ; 
they are only alluded to because they are essential in order to under- 
stand the problems with which we are concerned to-day. 

Since 1880 the recuperation of the South has been rapid and 
remarkable. Our industrial revival has been so frequently com- 
mented on that it is familiar to all. The increase in value of farms, 
farm products, implements and machinery, live stock, cotton mills, 
coal mines, iron foundries, railroads, has far surpassed the general 
average of increase for the country at large and has been a surprise 
even to ourselves. The South is throwing off the burden of its 
poverty. Her orchards are loaded with fruit, her gardens with 
vegetables, her fields are white with a cotton crop worth four hun- 



170 The Conference for Education. 

dred million dollars, mines are opened on every hillside, furnace 
fires lighted in every valley, and the hum of machinery is heard in 
every village and by every stream. We are sending granite to New 
England, iron to Pennsylvania, marble to Italy, and " coals to New- 
castle." But in the midst of this growing prosperity our progress 
in educational matters remains discreditable. The expenditure per 
capita of population has increased, but we are actually spending 
less for each pupil in attendance on public schools than was spent 
in 1870. 

We recognize, therefore, the timeliness of the great movement 
which the Southern Education Board has organized. We are thank- 
ful for every paper that can be written, for every investigation that 
can be made, for every word of warning, of entreaty, of encour- 
agement that can be uttered. We are grateful for the coming of 
these friends who meet us in the spirit of a broad patriotism and 
a noble philanthropy asking the privilege of sharing our burdens 
and helping to solve our problems. In that union of effort we 
realize the oneness of the American people. The study of abstract 
problems promotes differences. The Northern point of view differs 
materially from the Southern in regard to some points in our 
life and civilization. Manufacturers of cheap politics parade these 
differences and accentuate them. An irresponsible journalism arrays 
one section against another; but when we join forces in the great 
work of education, and see each other face to face, eye to eye, 
it then becomes clear that there are no material differences, that 
we all alike desire and are striving after the same things largely in 
the same way. Our problems, Mr. President, are yours, our inter- 
ests are yours ; yours, too, are our successes and yours our failures. 
(Applause.) 

" For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, 
Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong ; 
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame 
Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the pulse of joy or shame: 
In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim." 

In trying to realize the purposes of this convention we have 
discussed in detail the extent of Southern illiteracy, the meagerness 
of school expenditures, shortness of school terms, the wretchedness 
of our schoolhouses and general insufficiency of all appliances for 
school work. Perhaps it is now in order to emphasize for a moment 



7. H. Kirkland. 171 

the supreme importance of the teacher in this work we are planning 
for the South. In doing so we do not detract from the importance 
of every other agency alluded to, but before them all and above them 
all I place as the supreme educational need of the South at this 
time, competent teachers. All the problems of the school are in the 
end the problem of the teacher. The schoolhouse is but a body, 
the teacher is the soul ; even books are to most boys and girls dead 
rubbish until vitalized by the presence of an interpreter. We have 
had much to say recently of consolidating small schools into large 
ones, with large buildings and long terms. In a city of one of the 
oldest countries of the Old World is a school well consolidated, for 
it has 10,000 pupils ; its term is long, for it knows no regular vaca- 
tion ; its pupils are earnest, for many of them live on the crumbs that 
fall from the table of plenty, but no light breaks for the pupil, or 
for the world from the Mohammedan University of Cairo. On 
the other hand, without a building, without endowment, Athens 
became the schoolmistress of the world. Socrates taught on street 
corners and his lessons are still being learned ; Plato in an olive 
grove, and Zeno in a public porch ; greater than all, Jesus of 
Nazareth taught by lake or by roadside, in the valley or on the 
mountain top. In all the ages past, universities have been great by 
reason of great teachers. Till recently they have had few buildings, 
and meager equipment outside of libraries, but for seven hundred 
years they have been the source of life and of light ; they have out- 
lived wars and revolutions, they have seen cities crumble, nations 
die, dynasties pass away, while they have lived on. Discarding their 
own vernacular, they have spoken in a world language. The birth 
of our oldest universities, as at Salerno, Naples, Bologna and Paris, 
was due to the influence of great teachers, who, in some dismal 
rented hall, or in their own homes, spoke the words that drew the 
world to hear. And yet even universities are prone to forget these 
things at the present time. We go on erecting magnificent buildings, 
and often fail to put in them men of power. Benefactors prefer to 
erect buildings rather than to pay teachers. And in school work we 
photograph the log schoolhouse and tear it down for a new and 
handsome frame or brick building, but we put the same teacher into 
the new, and leave him to his same pernicious routine of unfruitful 
labors. This is not sound policy, either from an educational or 
business standpoint. It would be poor policy in a railroad company 



1^2 The Conference for Education. 

to expend large sums on roadbed, engines and handsome rolling 
stock, while they leave trains to be run by brakemen instead of 
trained engineers. It would be poor policy for a city to deepen its 
harbors, erect light-houses, build great ocean steamers, and leave 
ignorant pilots to guide them into the breakers and dash the treas- 
ures of freight and passengers on the rocks. 

There are in this country about half a million teachers employed 
in public schools. Is it too much to say that a large proportion of 
them are unfit for this responsible position? If I were afraid to 
say so, I could easily quote to this effect statements made in every 
section by leaders in every department of educational work. Go to 
the office of any state superintendent and read the letters received 
from his teachers ; look over the examination papers on which certif- 
icates are granted; go to the county institutes and work with the 
teachers present, remembering that the best are present, while the 
most inefficient stay away. It is not necessary to go into details 
here. It would be easy to wing my words with sarcasm or ridicule, 
but I forbear. I am speaking of my brothers and sisters, my col- 
leagues in a great calling, and there is occasion for tears rather than 
laughter. Fifteen months ago at the meeting of the Department of 
Superintendence of the National Educational Association, Mr. Frank 
L. Jones, superintendent of education for the state of Indiana, pre- 
sented these figures based on information secured concerning 20,662 
teachers in ten states. These ten states were: Indiana, Kansas, 
Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, 
Illinois and Iowa. Of these 20,662 teachers, 2,450 were teaching 
without previous experience, 4,880 had only a common school edu- 
cation, and 8,600 had not studied beyond the high school. If this 
state of affairs exists in the states whose system of public schools 
is held up to us as a model, what would the records of the Southern 
states show? In my own state of Tennessee out of 9,396 certifi- 
cates issued in 1900, 7,086 were third grade, and few, if any, of 
these teachers had had any instruction in school methods. This is 
a typical instance of Southern conditions. What can be done to 
remedy this state of affairs ? One view often expressed is that this 
matter will settle itself as soon as longer school terms and better pay 
are provided. But the president of this Conference, with more states- 
manlike grasp, in his annual address one year ago, asked this ques- 
tion : " If millions of money were ready, Avhere are the teachers ? Is 



/. H. Kirkland. 173 

there not here a new question for pedagogy to solve?" Our great 
educational revival will bring us longer terms. About this there 
can be no doubt. The writing on the wall is plain and cannot be 
misinterpreted. This change will come more rapidly than some of 
us have dared to hope, but will we have an improved order of 
teachers ready to meet the new conditions? This inquiry we can 
certainly answer in the negative unless we begin now to make 
preparation. This problem is worthy the most serious thought of 
this Conference, and calls for more active efforts than have hitherto 
been put forth. There are two points to be considered here : one is, 
to improve the supply of teachers we now have; the other, to get 
ready a new and better trained supply to take their places. The first 
task can only be accomplished in ways somewhat irregular. There 
is no process by which the teacher can be born again or be made to 
begin over again; but by county and state institutes, by reading 
circles, by correspondence courses, and by summer schools great 
improvement can be brought about in a condition well-nigh intoler- 
able. The pressure of school officials, county and state, can aid much 
in this work. But let us not overrate these means of grace. They 
are only palliative, not radically curative. More permanent results 
will be secured by the establishment of normal schools and by the 
improvement of those already existing. Even high schools can give 
normal courses to prospective teachers, and our colleges and uni- 
versities should lend their assistance by establishing chairs of peda- 
gogy and providing practical as well as theoretical work along this 
line. We have not yet begun to take hold of this question seriously 
in the South. Some things already done must be undone, — some 
institutions using the name of normal schools, normal colleges and 
normal universities must be banished from the list of reputable 
institutions and forced to close their doors or mend their ways, — and 
all of us must try to do better and reach higher standards than those 
already attained. (Applause.) 

This work belongs primarily to the state, and the state alone is 
able to carry it out. It is of as great importance to the state as the 
training of sailors and soldiers, and the licensing of teachers should 
be as carefully guarded as the licensing of lawyers and doctors. 
The Greek word for state has given us two words that indicate two 
spheres of activity — unfortunately, neither of them the highest : one 
is police and the other politician. One of these indicates that part of 



174 The Conference for Education. 

state activity that belongs to ourselves; the other that part which 
we apply to our neighbors. But we are not willing to admit that 
the supreme function of the state is to be found in the struggle to 
rule, whether of individuals or of parties, nor yet in the restraint of 
open violence or crime. No doubt the protection of life and property 
is one of the first duties of organized society, but even this task can- 
not be successfully performed by the soldier or policeman. Prop- 
erty is lost not through robbery alone; life is endangered in other 
ways than by violence. Ignorance is the great destroyer of property 
and of life. A few microbes cause more loss of life in one year than 
there have been homicides in a century ; a half dozen insects will 
inflict greater financial loss in the coming summer than robbers have 
occasioned in a generation. Even put on the lowest plane and 
expressed in the fewest terms, the duties and obligations of the 
state move out irresistibly into the field of education. No state has 
ever been truly great whose rule was merely that of the sword. 
Tamerlane conquered a kingdom greater than Rome's in the time 
of Trajan, but it passed away as a pebble dropped into the sea. The 
power that endures is not that of the sword, but of the spirit: the 
state must build its enduring habitations, not in the slaves over which 
it rules, but in the lives of its citizens whom it raises to be a race of 
kings. To do this, attention must be given to the development of 
a complete educational system. The state cannot rely on outside 
agencies. The home is the first school, but the state cannot be satis- 
fied with that. The pulpit and the press are educative in their influ- 
ence, but the state cannot be content with these. Self-interest or 
associated effort may arouse certain activities and call forth institu- 
tions erroneously called private schools, private academies, or private 
universities. To all of these the state should lend a sympathetic 
support, for they are all doing the work of the state, but it may not 
allow the great cause of education to rest here. Beyond all this the 
state must go, recognizing its obligations to every child, seeing in 
ev y life the possibility of a Divine incarnation, and finding in the 
up-lift of the individual and the social whole, its most glorious privi- 
lege and most urgent duty. (Applause.) 

This is the work to which the teacher must largely contribute, 
and for these duties he must be prepared. It is not merely a ques- 
tion of money. The whole profession must be elevated. The teach- 
ing profession inherits disabilities. We take our name from the 



/. H. Kirkland. 175 

slave that led the child to school, and often the teacher himself has 
been a slave. Slowly through the ages he has pulled himself up, and 
even yet he bears the mark of inferior service and feels the sting of 
social reproach. Read the multitude of confessions brought together 
in a late number of the World's Work and see if I do not speak the 
truth. The old " Town Book" gives the following as the duties of 
the schoolmaster in early New England: " i. To act as court mes- 
senger. 2. To serve summonses. 3. To conduct certain ceremonial 
services of the Church. 4. To lead the Sunday school. 5. To ring 
the bell for public worship. 6. To dig the graves. 7. To take charge 
of the school. 8. To perform other occasional duties." A some- 
what more graphic description of the diversified labors of the early 
teacher in rural districts may be found in the following advertise- 
ment of a " Parson's Clerk," whose services were rendered in the 
famous Lake District of England. The undersigned " reforms ladies ' 
and gentlemen that he draws teeth witout waiting a moment, blisters 
on the lowest terms and fysicks at a penny. Sells God-father's cor- 
dial, cuts corns, and undertakes to keep anybody's nails by the year 
or so on. Young lades and gentelmen tort their grammer language ' 
in the neatest possible manner ; also great care taken of their morals r 
and spellin. I teeches joggrefy and all them outlandish things." ' 
This was the same clerk who was said to have given the following 
notice to the assembled congregation : " There'll be nae service in 
this church for m' appon a matter o' fower weeks, as parson's hen is 
settin in th' pulpit." 

In contrast with this, let us take the statement of Plato, who 
says in regard to the minister of education that " of all the great 
offices of state, this is the greatest. He should be elected who, of all 
the citizens, is in every respect the best." To the teacher society 
entrusts its highest interests. The true teacher is the high priest 
of humanity; he is to childhood the interpreter of God and nature, 
he saves each generation from savagery, he gives the child his 
inheritance in all the achievements of the human race, he voices the 
wisdom of the past and the prophecies of the future. To this work 
he should come with a fullness of knowledge, for he bears the riches 
of God's universe; with skill in method, for he handles not imple- 
ments of stone and wood, but human minds and hearts ; with the life- 
giving power of a great soul, that vitalizes all it touches and pours 



176 The Conference for Education. 

itself out with the largesse of divinity, for only thus can he quicken 
the soul of man. 

Shall we have teachers like these for the South? If so, then 
will the hopes that inspire this Conference be more than realized. 

I believe in the South. Never has the cloud over her been so 
heavy that I have despaired of her future, and still less do I despair 
in this hour. I believe in her people — a people that inherits the 
noblest traditions of the Anglo-Saxon race. I believe in her 
material prosperity, so fully indicated in a thousand evidences of 
new enterprise around us. I believe in her spiritual and intellectual 
life, that this Conference and these friends are doing so much to stir 
and stimulate. We are but at the beginning of the new era. The 
light we see is not the full glare of the day, but the purple tints of 
the dawn foretelling the coming of the golden sun. The Southern 
people are now worshipping toward the rising sun. We look forward 
to the time when the stress of poverty shall be relieved, and our 
land be filled with plenty, when our curse of ignorance shall be 
removed, when our isolation shall cease and the spirits of our 
leaders shall be emancipated from enervating traditions, when our 
statesmen shall resume their places of influence in the halls their 
fathers built and sanctified, when all internal strife shall be healed 
by Divine justice and human sympathy; then shall our section take 
its place by the side of other sections, as brothers walking hand in 
hand, moving forward to the accomplishment of all great and holy 
enterprises, and singing to the music of forge and of anvil, of 
church bell and college chimes, the song once sung by angels over 
Bethlehem's plain, " Peace on earth, good-will toward men." (Pro- 
longed applause.) 

At the conclusion of Dr. Kirkland's address, the Conference 
adjourned until 3.30 p. m. 



AFTERNOON SESSION. 

The Conference was called to order at 3.30 p. m. 

The President : — Continuing Dr. Peabody's illustration of last 
night, as to the number of stations, we have eight ; they are all inter- 
esting, and our train will have to run on schedule time this after- 
noon, and because we start a little late we must, therefore, be very 
prompt in making time. 



F. P. V enable. 177 

I have the pleasure of introducing President Venable, of the 
University of North CaroHna, who will open the discussion upon 
the topic announced in the program, " The Work of the University 
in the Southern States." 

The Work of the University in the South. 
By Dr. F. P. Venable, President of the University of North Carolina. 

Dr. Venable: — Two weeks ago I received a note from Mr. 
Murphy, stating that he expected me to speak before this Con- 
ference for fifteen minutes upon the " Work of the University in 
the South." The subject is so large and the time so short that I 
find it difficult to fit the two together. 

The work of a university in its state and for the South is many- 
sided and most important. It trains the leaders and fits its sons for 
useful citizenship, it directs in much that makes for progress and 
development and it forms the keystone of the educational system. 
The history of many a Southern state would be comparatively barren 
and inglorious if we cut out the part played by the sons of its 
university. 

But this Conference would care little for a recital of these 
matters of leadership or the achievements in official and civil life. 
We are here to consider what is called popular education, by some 
believed to be distinct from or even opposed to the higher education 
of the few who are to lead. I cannot do better with my few 
minutes than maintain and establish this proposition, namely, that 
university education is an absolutely essential and integral part of 
popular education, differing only in degree, and that it must come 
first, there being no possibility of popular education without it. 

My reasons for believing this shall be briefly stated. First, 
many trained teachers are needed if the whole people are to be 
taught. We may confer here, discuss methods and decide on plans, 
but after all, the warfare against illiteracy is to be carried on by 
an army of teachers, officered and trained by those whom the uni- 
versities and colleges have sent forth. 

The fountain from which the stream takes its rise and whence 
it draws its power of blessing is the university. 

But the second reason is even more important. There must be 
a sentiment in favor of education contended for and fostered by 
those who have enjoyed its benefits and can appreciate its value. 



178 The Conference for Education. 

Here, for instance, is a conference in behalf of the education 
of the untaught thousands throughout the South. Is it a mass- 
meeting of these people, the illiterates, demanding their rights? 
Does it spring from some uttered cry of theirs for more light? 
Do you come here because of the insistence of the uneducated? My 
friends, the pity of it is that the ignorant do not feel nor recognize 
their need. You come here because your hearts are stirred with a 
pity for those who need your help that has in it something of the 
spirit of Him who came to bring deliverance to the captive and 
preach the Gospel to the poor. This is almost entirely a meeting 
of college-bred men and we have set ourselves the great task of 
rousing the people to their needs, giving freely of time and talents 
and money that they, too, may have light. Aye, of forcing them, 
if needs be, to partake of this light and this broader life. 

History has always had it so. The light has always filtered 
downwards and, in a word, I may say that the great work of the 
colleges and universities in the South has been and must be the 
education of the whole people. Therein lies the only hope of com- 
plete success. University education means universal education in a 
democratic country. (Applause.) 

Let me illustrate this in part by the story of what has taken 
place in North Carolina. In their first constitution, those sturdy 
men who had thrown ofif the foreign tyranny and won the land, 
willed that their children should be free from the still greater bond- 
age of ignorance, declaring that one or more universities should be 
established. Notice the prodigality of their provision for what is 
now styled higher education, with no word of mention of popular 
education. But they were wise. The latter would surely follow. 
The Act of Incorporation of the University reads : " Whereas, in 
all well-regulated Governments it is the indispensable Duty of every 
Legislature to consult the Happiness of a rising Generation, and 
endeavor to fit them for an honorable discharge of the social Duties 
of Life, by paying the strictest attention to their education: And 
whereas an University supported by permanent Funds, and well 
endowed, would have the most direct tendency to answer the above 
Purpose:" therefore, etc. 

One university was established and among its first students it 
inspired for his work and sent out Archibald Murphy, who began 
the agitation for popular education and together with Bartlett 



F. P. V enable. 179 

Yancey, another son of the University, succeeded in estabHshing 
the Literary Fund which should aid and establish the common 
schools. Then followed Calvin Wiley, another son who gave his 
life to the work, traveling with horse and buggy to all parts of the 
state and establishing by his untiring energy the best public school 
system in the South. Then came the war with its devastation and 
ruin. One-third of the able-bodied men were lost in those terrible 
four years, and little beside the desolate fields and empty homes was 
left. With patient heroism the work was taken up once more. A 
little money was set aside for schools, but largely wasted. The doors 
of the University were once more opened, for I tell you, therein lay 
and lies the hope of the people. In the first five years there came 
from its halls, among others who have nobly played their part, 
Aycock, the school governor; Joyner, the state superintendent of 
schools, and Mclver and Alderman, of your board. 

For fifteen years the sons of the University have visited all parts 
of the state and preached the crusade of education. They have held 
summer schools and county institutes, battled over elections for 
school taxes, and established graded schools. This is no new move- 
ment with us, but an old warfare in which we gladly welcome your 
aid and would acknowledge without stint of praise the help which 
has come from the colleges. 

The University has trained and sent out more than 1,500 teach- 
ers and these have trained thousands of others. It established one of 
the first summer schools for teachers in the South, beginning this 
work in 1877 and thus aiding some four thousand teachers to fit 
themselves better for teaching in the common schools. It has 
manned the graded schools with superintendents and principals, 
placing fourteen of its students in this work last year. Forty per 
cent of its graduates have begun their life-work as teachers. I will 
not weary you by further recounting these matters. The point is 
this, that the University has thrown itself heart and soul into the 
great and immediate work which lay before it, of educating the 
whole people, answering this call as it did that other battle-cry forty 
years ago, when even its freshman class, excepting one who was 
physically disabled, all entered the service and one in three lay 
down his life for his beloved South. (Applause.) 

An heroic story, and doubtless similar stories could be told of 



i8o The Conference for Education. 

other Southern universities. I have simply told you of the one that 
I know best. 

Some may ask why is it that more has not been accomplished 
if such energy and purpose have been shown. I answer that the 
chief obstacle has been poverty. Southern universities have been 
forced to struggle on with most inadequate support. The one of 
which I have been speaking received its first direct appropriation^ 
from the state when it was ninety-two years old and that an appro- 
priation of $5,000, and there are others' which even now receive 
nothing from their states but depend largely upon the General Gov- 
ernment. The state of North Carolina has never appropriated money 
to place a building at its University. And yet the return to the 
state has been beyond all price in the sons she has trained for the 
state's and the nation's service. 

Do not misunderstand me. I do not mention these things as 
a plea for help. We are no beggars. We are doing our work and 
doing it better and on a larger scale with each passing year. We 
are proud of the labor and the sacrifice, the hard years of struggle, 
and of the thousands and tens of thousands who have been blessed 
in spite of poverty and because of toil. 

As for me it is the great happiness of my life that I have been 
allowed to take some little part in this great struggle. (Applause.) 

The President: — Professor Edwin Minis, of Trinity College, 
Durham, N. C, will continue the discussion of this topic. 

The University in the South. 
By Professor Edwin Mims, of Trinity College, Durham, N. C. 

Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen, While I realize that 
the work of this Conference is directed primarily to the development 
of rural schools, the subject assigned for this hour necessarily sug- 
gests the problems of higher education in the South. Many South- 
ern people, even leaders, in educational work, are ignorant of the 
men and movements connected with the solution of these problems, 
while Northern men are as ignorant of them as they are of many 
other phases of Southern life. A fight just as difficult, just as 
strenuous, as that in which they are engaged, is now being waged 
by other leaders in behalf of higher standards of admission and 
graduation and increased endowments and equipments. No one 



Edwin Mims. i8i 

who has been at the heart of this movement for universal education 
can fail to be in deepest sympathy with it, but unless the leaders 
of higher education are just as enthusiastic and wise and patient 
as the members of the Southern Education Board, they will leave 
very pressing problems unsolved. The rebuilding of old common- 
wealths is to go on not only in the rural schools, but in the libraries, 
laboratories and lecture rooms of Southern colleges and universities. 
(Applause.) 

The organization to which has been entrusted the working out 
of many of the problems of colleges and secondary schools is the 
Southern Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools, organ- 
ized in Atlanta in 1895. Realizing that the South has suffered from 
a lack of a properly correlated educational system, the members of 
this organization have endeavored to define more accurately the 
work of school, college and university. To that end they have 
insisted on definite and rigidly enforced requirements for admission 
and graduation — requirements approximating those that now pre- 
vail in the best Northern institutions. This association has had to 
work in the face of strong opposition on the part of not only colleges 
of low rank, but colleges and universities that have comparatively 
large endowments and equipments, but have not developed an edu- 
cational conscience with regard either to admission or graduation. 
College presidents, instead of being educational experts, thoroughly 
familiar with the most recent educational progress, have thought 
that enthusiasm for the masses might atone for the serious neglect 
of the more technical, but none the less important, phases of higher 
education. 

That this movement is to-day as successful as it is, is due pri- 
marily to the untiring patience and wisdom of Chancellor Kirkland 
of Vanderbilt University, who for ten years in his own institution 
and among the other institutions of the South has stood for the 
highest ideals of educational work. He and others like him have 
appropriated the best results attained in other sections of the country 
by similar organizations. We have all been gratified to hear the 
sincere tributes that have been paid to Thomas Jefferson as an edu- 
cational leader; what he has done for American institutions by his 
adoption of the elective system and freedom of religious worship, 
has been adequately appreciated. Southern institutions, with the 
same open-mindedness, need to reap the benefits of work done within 



i82 The Conference for Education. 

the past twenty-five years by Presidents Eliot and Hadley, Butler 
and Harper. The followers of Jefferson, in both education and 
politics, often fail to profit by what was after all his chief virtue, his 
progressiveness and cosmopolitanism. He went everywhere — to 
France, England, New England — for ideas and institutions. 

Public sentiment is growing in the South in the direction of an 
insistence on the demands made of a modern well-equipped college. 
Men are beginning to see that endowments and libraries and labora- 
tories are absolutely essential for the development of scholarly work, 
and are endeavoring to thwart those institutions of learning that 
have perpetrated frauds upon the public in the name of education. 
I have often regretted that Garfield said what he did about Mark 
Hopkins and the log, for the remark has done valiant service in the 
South and West for the maintenance of colleges and universities 
which had no right by the common standards of honesty to exist. 
The members of the Southern Education Board have turned the 
light of publicity upon the country schools ; men are also turning 
the light on colleges, and finding that many of them are unworthy 
of the names they bear. The cry of consolidation of schools has been 
raised ; we need also to work towards the consolidation or abolition 
of colleges. Let us not in our efforts to secure the adoption of local 
taxation as a fundamental principle of American democracy forget 
to urge upon state legislatures the prime necessity of allowing state 
institutions the best possible chance for the pursuit of scholarly 
ends, nor in our enthusiasm over the recent remarkable gifts for 
school purposes fail to appreciate the men, some of them Southern- 
ers, who are making possible the endowment of colleges and the 
proper equipment of libraries and laboratories. There are fewer 
people in the South than ever before who believe that because North 
Carolina or Ohio has more colleges than Massachusetts, they are for 
that reason the more fortunate. 

Out of this demand for proper educational standards and facili- 
ties is coming a new sense of the dignity and worth of scholarship. 
When the University of Virginia was organized, Thomas Jefferson 
induced five English scholars to become members of its faculty 
because of the lack of scholars in this country. The time has been 
in the South when there was almost a necessity for Northern men 
to fill chairs of instruction, but in recent years more and more 
Southern men of first-rate talent have been preparing themselves 



Edwin Mims. 183 

in the best universities of this country and of Europe for the highest 
grade of work. A few years ago a good many of these brighter men 
went to Northern institutions, where they might have larger re- 
sources with which to work, but now, as endowments and Hbraries 
and laboratories are increasing, a constantly increasing number of 
them are not only content but eager to work in Southern institutions, 
because they see here an opportunity of doing permanent work in 
the rejuvenation and reconstruction of Southern life. Their names 
are not known by many people in this audience, they are not in the 
public eye, but within the next decade you will see the achievements 
of this band of scholars who are working in the name of truth for 
the widening of the horizons of human knowledge. 

With the advance of scholarship in the South, and with the 
scholar's recognition of his place in a democratic order, there have 
come and will come more and more freedom of thought and freedom 
of speech. Scholars — an increasing number, let us hope — are bring- 
ing to bear upon Southern life the influence of modern ideas and 
insisting on open-mindedness and cosmopolitanism as the prime 
virtues of a progressive people. Teachers of literature are bringing 
young men into a larger world of thought — "an ampler ether, a 
diviner air" — striving to put them in touch with the best revelations 
of genius and the artistic record of their race. Teachers of history, 
with scientific accuracy and yet a vital feeling for the past, are 
bringing to us the experience of the world as a guide for our future 
life, and are writing the history of this section, not according to the 
demands of sentiment, but with the accuracy of truth. Teachers of 
political and social science are giving due interpretation to the new 
industrial order now so manifest, and are bringing to the new social 
problems engendered thereby the best results of the experiences of 
England and the North. Teachers of science — technical and theo- 
retical — are making us familiar with scientific principles and 
methods, and are bringing into our thought those truths that have 
revolutionized modern philosophy. Teachers of Biblical literature, 
loyal to the essential truth of the old faith, are yet brave enough to 
accept truth from whatever source it may come and to abide by the 
truth wherever it may lead. (Applause.) 

Such scholars cannot do their work without exciting opposition 
and prejudice. The question of academic freedom is a live question 
here, as elsewhere in the country. More largely than many have 



184 The Conference for Education. 

realized, freedom of speech has won its place in the best Southern 
institutions. Professor Trent was attacked severely by some South- 
ern newspapers and public men for his life of William Gilmore 
Simms and his " Southern Statesmen of the Old Regime," but the 
University of the South was thoroughly loyal to him, while men in 
other institutions rallied about him. Professor Houston was attacked 
for certain opinions on the money question, but he is to-day at the 
head of a leading institution in Texas, and highly honored throughout 
the South. The recent forced resignation of Professor Sledd would 
not have taken place in some Southern institutions with which I am 
familiar, whose faculties unhesitatingly condemned the action of the 
Emory College trustees. A book containing the addresses of a 
dozen of the most prominent presidents and professors of Southern 
colleges would be a surprise to the academic circles of the North 
that have not watched closely the development of the most recent 
phases of Southern life. The Sezvanee Review (published at the 
University of the South), that has just completed ten years' suc- 
cessful history, and the South Atlantic Qiiarterly (published at 
Trinity College), now in its second year, have given notable expres- 
sions to the most thoughtful opinions of Southern scholars. 

While giving due attention to these unmistakable evidences of 
increasing freedom and cosmopolitanism, I would not minimize the 
struggle .yet to be made before they shall be generally recognized 
and established. Unfortunately, many leaders of educational work 
are flatterers, rather than leaders, of the people, and so stand in the 
way of genuine progress. I have heard more than one president of 
prominent Southern institutions make light of men who were inde- 
pendent in their thought and free in their utterance. Tradition, con- 
servatism, bigotry, prejudice, here as elsewhere, must stand in the 
way of the children of light. The independent in politics, the lib- 
eral in religion, will have no easy time. In the South, least of all, 
should the scholar be dumb, or the institution of learning hide its 
light under a bushel. The Southern college needs to become a more 
vital factor in the life of the people; not timid or overcautious, but 
brave, even as those who love truth and are the friends of progress. 
You cannot write the history of modern Germany without recording 
the heroic work of German scholars. The story of the renaissance 
of New England is but half told when Harvard College is omitted. 
In the industrial, educational and intellectual progress of the South- 



Edwin Minis. 185 

ern states the colleges that will deserve most consideration from the 
future historian are those that will at the present time become the 
leaders and the inspirers of the people. 

I have just one fear about the notable utterances made by North- 
ern men at this Conference. There is a danger that in all that is 
being said by them in the way of eulogizing Southern heroes, and 
adopting Southern points of view on certain questions, we of the 
South may become confirmed in our provincialism, established in our 
isolation. This will not happen if we meet the sentiments of these 
gentlemen with equal frankness, equal candor, and equal magna- 
nimity. If we are all rejoicing that Northern men are seeing some 
of their mistakes and are learning from us, we must not blind 
ourselves to the fact that we have much to unlearn from ourselves. 
We must remember that we have defects, limitations that can only 
be overcome by the largest possible contact with other men and other 
civilizations. We are all profoundly stirred by the discriminating 
and heartfelt eulogies of Jackson, Lee, and Grady by the gifted 
orator of Brooklyn. Will Southern men speak just as discriminating 
and heartfelt tributes to Sumner, Webster, and Lincoln, the cham- 
pion of freedom, the upholder of the national idea, the preserver 
of the Union ? Shall we not put by the side of Mr. Mabie's tribute 
to Lanier, one equally as felicitous and sincere to Whittier and 
Lowell ? The spirit of nationalism and of brotherhood should work 
both ways. We have been deeply impressed with the statesman- 
like and magnanimous utterance of Mr. Cleveland on the negro 
question, but unless Southern people meet his point of view with 
equal frankness and equal open-mindedness, unless they shall rise 
to the responsibility suggested by him, better it had never been 
delivered. While we hear with deep feeling the words of Dr. 
Lyman Abbott, giving expression to the changed opinion of many 
Northern people with regard to suffrage, we must insist that the 
methods employed in Reconstruction times, however necessary they 
were for the preservation of Anglo-Saxon civilization, must not be 
continued at a time when the suffrage of the negro has been put upon 
an entirely different basis. We need to insist not only that the open 
door of hope shall not be shut in the face of any man, but that 
absolute justice shall be done the negro under the changed conditions 
that now prevail in the Southern states. (Applause.) 

If we shall meet all Southern problems and national problems 



1 86 The Conference for Education. ' 

with the same spirit that has characterized the Annual Conference 
for Education in the South, if we can bring to them the same national 
spirit, the same magnanimity, the same open-mindedness, we shall 
see the coming of a great day in Southern life. No one can have too 
high a hope of what may be achieved within the next quarter of a 
century. Freed from the limitations that have so long hampered 
us, and buoyant with the energy of a new life coursing through our 
veins, we shall press forward to the destiny that awaits us. If, to 
the sentiment, the chivalry, and the hospitality that have character- 
ized Southern life, shall be added the intellectual keenness, the 
spiritual sensitiveness, and the enlarged freedom of the modern 
world, the time is not far off when scholarship, literature, and art 
shall flourish among us, and when all things that make for the intel- 
lectual and spiritual emancipation of man shall find their fit home 
here. (Applause.) 

The President : — Continuing in the line of freedom of discus- 
sion, I shall ask Dr. Rose, professor in the University of Tennessee, 
to further discuss the question before us. 

The Place of the University in Modern Life. 
By Dr. Wickliffe Rose, Professor in the University of Tennessee. 

Dr. Rose : — Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, As it seems 
to me, any consideration of this subject of the work of the university 
in the Southern states should presuppose a very frank recognition of 
the fact that this educational movement in which we are to-day par- 
ticipating is in no degree a local movement, and in no sense an 
ephemeral phenomenon. Every thoughtful man who has had occa- 
sion during the last fifteen years to give attention to the educational 
movement in modern states, knows quite well that this movement 
is not peculiar to our section, nor to our country, nor to our conti- 
nent. There has been in England, in Germany, in France and in all 
the smaller states of Europe during the last decade an intensity of 
educational activity which has been unequaled in any other period 
of their history. The Frenchman who a few months ago said that 
Germany has demonstrated the national significance of schools, 
voiced the sentiment of Europe. And Emperor William, when, in 
1890, he said to the schoolmasters of Germany, " In your hands lies 
the future of the empire," voiced the social creed of our modern civ- 
ilization. In short, I mean to say that this movement in which we 



Wickliffe Rose. 187 

are participating is as broad and deep as our modern civilization. 
Its meaning is simply this, that in the evolution of life the centre of 
gravity is being transferred from the physical to the spiritual. We 
have reached a period in civilization when man is taking his develop- 
ment into his own keeping and is able to give it intelligent direction. 

In this larger civilization of ours, in which modern states are 
participating as units, there is still being worked out on this higher 
plane the biological principle of the struggle for existence with the 
survival of the fittest. Wherever you have inequality of intelligence, 
you have the condition of the master and the slave, the condition of 
the leader and the led. Leadership in our civilization is the preroga- 
tive of that nation which represents the highest intelligence. To my 
mind, that is the secret of this phenomenon so apparent to all of us, 
that the school to-day is the centre of universal interest and uni- 
versal attention. 

In seeking this leadership, we are, as nations, striving in this 
larger civilization for the highest degree of social efficiency. Effi- 
ciency, in any great undertaking, has in it two fundamental ele- 
ments. These elements are energy, or force, and organization, or 
direction of that force. A simple illustration will make my point 
clear. Those of you who have ever seen the boy in the gymnasium 
undertake for the first time to climb the rope with his hands know 
quite well that his failure is due not to any lack of energy on his part, 
but to lack of proper direction of that energy. 

As I conceive it, the South is not wanting in energy, in native 
force. The greatest educational need of the South to-day is the 
organization or direction of that force. These educational campaigns 
which we have been waging for the past few years have aroused a 
beautiful enthusiasm ; this enthusiasm, however, represents but a 
reservoir of energy which is awaiting direction into channels of 
constructive activity in order to accomplish the results we wish. To 
supply this directive power is the function of the university in the 
South. (Applause.) 

Permit me to continue this from one point of view simply, 
because I cannot now follow it in its details. Our attention, in all 
of this Conference, in the daily press, in our educational literature, 
is centred upon the rural school of the South — and that is well. 
But permit me to say frankly, after we have gotten our rural 
school with its local taxation, with its increased attendance, with 



i88 The Conference for Education. 

its improved building, with its library, with its school garden 
and with all of its material conveniences, which have occupied so 
much of our attention here, we have after all but the dead materials 
of education, and all of these things must wait for their quickening 
power, upon the personality of the teacher who is to administer them. 
(Applause.) Education is something more than learning about 
plants and seeds, something more than learning arithmetic and gram- 
mar and geography and history. We are educating children to live. 
The function of the school is to initiate the child into the larger life 
of the race. To do this, I take it, the teacher must know something 
of what that life is. He who would lead children into the larger 
life must come into the school bringing something of that larger life 
with him. That is a significant statement in Wilhelm Meister in 
which Goethe contrasts the characters of Theresa and Natalia. The 
one has been trained into the systematic habits of the model German 
housewife, the other has grown up in enviable freedom surrounded 
by the best which the race has produced in the various phases of its 
civilization ; both are teachers ; " Theresa," says our author, " trains 
her children, Natalia educates hers." It is as impossible for a Theresa 
really to educate as it is natural and inevitable that a Natalia should 
educate every child brought into touch with her personality. " The 
great regenerating power of this world," says Dr. Edward Everett 
Hale, " is the living human personality." It is not the house, nor the 
furniture, nor the book, nor the program, nor the school garden, 
but this touch of personality with personality that quickens the child 
into the higher life. The strategic point, therefore, in all our educa- 
tional endeavor is in the equipment of teachers. 

By our present system hundreds of boys and girls, fresh from 
the elementary schools, young in years, with no large experience of 
life, with only a modicum of that quality we call culture, and with no 
professional training, are returned as teachers to those same schools 
from which they have just come; as if the elementary school could 
lift itself by its own bootstraps ! The Germans are wiser. If a 
youth on completion of the elementary school course aspires to teach 
in that school, he must spend at least three years in academic work 
extending his scholarship; then three years more in the seminary, 
where, in addition to the extension of his scholarship, he receives 
professional training ; then he must have two years of practice before 
receiving permanent appointment to a position in the elementary 



Wickliffe Rose. 189 

school. This standard applied to our system would mean that the 
teacher in the elementary school must have completed a good four 
years high school course and have had at least two years training 
in a normal school. 

Now since the vital factor in the elementary school is the 
teacher, and since the teacher, to be vital, must come to his work 
from a higher plane, it is evident that any efficient system of elemen- 
tary education is conditioned on the maintenance of a system of 
adequately equipped high schools and normal schools. But these 
high and normal schools must in like manner draw their life blood 
from the college and university. The teacher in the German higher 
school is a university man, a trained specialist as well as a broad 
scholar. The teacher in a school of given grade should be educated 
in a school of higher grade; the university alone, by training the 
independent scholar capable of directing his own advancement, being 
in position to supply its own instructors. The university stands at 
the head of the system, supplying inspiration, vitality, directive 
power to the whole. 

The system is an organic unity, and any part of it depends for 
its vitality upon its articulation with the organic whole. This 
important truth we are just now in danger of overlooking in our 
enthusiasm for the improvement of the rural elementary school. 
The one truth which I am trying to emphasize is that certain failure 
awaits any scheme of reform that would undertake to build up the 
elementary rural school as an independent institution. Any perma- 
nent advance at this point will come as a phase of the evolution of 
the system as a whole. Until we frankly recognize that the building 
of a great university is a part of the program for the maintenance 
of efficient elementary rural schools, we shall be wasting our energies 
in a misguided endeavor. (Applause.) 

But we have not yet seen the deeper and more vital relations of 
the university to the elementary schools until we have recognized 
something of the intimate and inexpressibly subtle relation of the 
educational problem to every other aspect of social life ; till we have 
seen that real progress in education must go hand in hand with the 
general evolution of society ; that in this evolution education is both 
cause and effect; and that in so far as the university, by fostering 
the higher ideals, conserving the deeper historic culture, or develop- 
ing scientific technique, contributes to leadership in any line of 



190 The Conference for Education. 

social service it is contributing to society as a whole and thereby 
reacting upon every phase of educational endeavor. 

When we fully appreciate the relation of the rural school to the 
whole system of schools, and see the problem of education in its 
true relation to our social life, and interpret our social endeavors in 
the light of the larger movements of civilization, we shall see the 
place and the function of the tmiversity in our educational scheme. 
With this recognition we may hope at some time to have a great 
university in the South which shall conserve and develop that which 
is best in Southern civilization, quickening its enthusiasms, defining 
its ideals, and directing its activities. (Applause.) 

The President : — We are now to hear from Dr. S. C. Mitchell, 
professor in Richmond Colege. 

The Part of the Citizen in Aiding the Cause of Public 

Education. 

By Dr. S. C. Mitchell, of Richmond, Virginia. 

Mr. President, Ladies and ^Gentlemen, It is apparent, I am 
sure, to all, after listening to the helpful discussion of the past two 
days, that the educational revival for which this Conference stands 
is a friend to religion and patriotism. It is equally apparent that it 
is a foe to sectarianism and sectionalism, two things which are often 
found working in unison. To the unholy alliance of sectarianism 
and sectionalism this Conference opposes sympathy, or like-minded- 
ness which is the beautiful fruit of education. In such a contest can 
any one doubt the issue? 

I rejoice in the note of sympathy which this gathering intones 
with such power. In that is its chief strength. We are here to see, 
eye to eye and face to face ; earnest to do good, but, prior to that, 
resolute to know the truth. The discussions here have shown the 
sympathy and identification of all sections of the country with the 
South in the solution of the tremendous educational problem, which 
the executive secretary of the Southern Education Board, Mr. 
Murphy, has so aptly put forth in a pamphlet on " The Task of the 
South," which I wish every man and every woman in the South 
could read. The part of the citizen in aiding the cause of public edu- 
cation, in my opinion, will be greatly facilitated by his realizing with 
perfect distinctness the nature and extent of the work to be done. 



5". C. Mitchell. 



191 



This Conference has spoken of local taxation — that is a means ; 
of better school building's — that is a means ; of improved methods of 
teaching — they are means ; of the strength of personality in the 
teacher — that also is a means. 

Our aim is not individual, but communal. We are not here, 
as I understand, seeking primarily the good of the individual, either 
as regards his own culture or the increase of his wealth. We 
are not here primarily seeking that which will advantage a particular 
section; but the professed aim, the fundamental object of this par- 
ticular Conference, is a patriotic one, a national one. And if it is 
possible to bring our citizens to realize distinctly the force of that 
national idea, the moneys that have thus far been spent in this 
movement and are to be expended, and the efforts of our great 
corps of high-minded and faithful teachers, will be a thousand-fold 
more effective. 

There was an alarming statement made here to-day, — possibly 
there is too much truth in it. One gentleman said that the South 
against its will had given more than one hundred million dollars 
since 1866 for the education of the negro. I believe that the South- 
ern citizen can contribute most to the success of the cause of public 
education by putting his heart, his enthusiasm, and his intelligent 
purpose back of the one hundred millions to make it effective. 
(Applause.) Let us bestow our love as well as our money upon the 
school, whether that school be for the white or the black child. 

Our Southern problem is not without precedent. It is enough 
to discourage one, looking at it in certain aspects. But it is not 
altogether without precedent. What was Stein's object, in 1807, in 
proposing to organize the educational system of Prussia? It was 
not primarily the good of the individual ; he was seeking, by setting 
free all the energies of the Prussian youth, to re-create a nation 
that would be sufficiently strong to regain the prestige it had lost 
and take its rightful place in the councils of the world. And the 
same thing was true in the case of Cavour ; he was not seeking the 
individual good, but he was seeking the greatness of a nation ; and 
the very force of the national purpose he held up before Italians 
strung their nerves with an electric energy they were not accustomed 
to feel. I believe that the national aspect of the problem which 
confronts the Southern educator should so thrill and enliven his 
being that he would carry all before him. 



192 The Conference for Education. 

It is such a contribution of spirit that the citizen of the South 
or North can make to this great cause of popular education. That 
is something more than money; it is something more than peda- 
gogy; it is something more than training teachers. It is a question 
of the ultimate ideal of nationality towards which these intellectual 
and social forces shall be directed. 

Is there any harm or impropriety in emphasizing upon this 
platform and before these Southern people that in thus exalting 
the nation we are simply reverting to the position we first took? 
The first word uttered in our national council should also be the 
final word. When the colonial delegates first met, in 1774, in 
Philadelphia, awed by the issues that had brought them into each 
other's presence, they remained for a while silent. Then it was 
a man born near this place, yonder in Hanover County, who arose 
and said, in words that ought to be blazoned on every schoolhouse : 
** The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers 
and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an 
American." (Applause.) 

That sentiment of Patrick Henry ought to be the inspiration 
of every teacher in every public school. And such is the dominant 
note, I am glad to say, that is all through the discussions here. I 
am simply rehearsing what has been told you many and many a 
time, but when once that point as to the national spirit of the school 
becomes clear to the mind of every teacher, however humble, there 
will be a transformation ; and there will be an amount of energy 
set free in his pupils that will accomplish more than a revolution. 

We do not wish to imply that in the South the citizen has not 
taken part in public education. There is a certain college, typical 
of many another, whose walls were pierced through with shot and 
shell, and yet there are three hundred youths to-day studying in its 
halls. In spite of the ills of the war and its ravages, the South did 
not permit a single college, that had shown reason for its existence, 
to die. You came back from battle to find these colleges in ashes, 
but every one of them was rebuilt. (Applause.) And many of 
you endured the sacrifices that made possible that splendid achieve- 
ment. Such devotion to education is almost without a parallel. 

Now one word and I am done. How shall we get the whole 
citizenship back of the public school? That is the problem. A 
number of noble women of this city have made a decisive answer to 



/. Y. Joyner. 193 

that question, so far as we are concerned. I do not say that their 
work is unique. Doubtless in many other cities the same experiment 
has been tried with similar results. But the Committee on Pro- 
gram seemed to be unwilling for this occasion to pass without at 
least emphasizing the fact that a corps of women in Richmond, known 
as the Richmond Education Association, had studied the problem 
of how to get the whole citizenship back of the cause of education, 
and had in a large measure solved it. It is a little secret, but I am 
tempted to mention it, that the idea was given by a visitor to this 
city, one in whose presence we have the honor to sit this afternoon. 
What has it been worth to the city of Richmond, what has it been 
worth to the state of Virginia — that idea, whispered in the privacy 
of a parlor into the ear of a friend? A little band was drawn 
together: it did not seem that there was any great work for them 
to do, no definite plan presented itself; but they formed an organ- 
ization sufficiently elastic to live and grow. They called into 
requisition all the educational talent here. Presently a great paper 
took up the work, and with marvelous enthusiasm and wisdom 
pushed it forward. The association fired others with the spirit of 
service in public education, from the governor down to the humblest 
school-teacher. The very presence in our city of this notable Con- 
ference and the inspiration of all the discussions we have heard 
here, are but a tribute to the leadership of that noble band of women. 
In endeavoring to put back of this cause of public education the 
sympathy and efforts of every patriot in the community, they have 
done a grateful service. Is it too much to hope that a similar 
organization shall spring up in the various communities throughout 
the South. (Applause.) 

The President : — I now have the privilege of calling upon 
Dr. J. Y. Joyner, superintendent of education of the state of North 
Carolina, for remarks upon this subject, or any other he may be 
disposed to discuss. (Applause.) 

The Better Schoolhouse. 

By the Hon. J. Y. Joyner, State Superintendent of Education for 
North Carolina. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have learned from 
sad experience that there is no escape from the eagle eye of our 
splendid chairman. I thought yesterday afternoon that I was born 
13 



194 The Conference for Education. 

lucky, because I understood that our chairman called for me and 
found me missing. My lucky star was shining yesterday, and I 
am sorry that my unlucky one is shining to-day. And yet I know 
not how to keep my seat when asked to speak a word in this great 
cause that lies so near my heart — the education of a little child. 
I do not wonder that the Master Himself, while on earth, should 
have chosen, from among all that He found here, the form of a little 
child to take into His blessed arms and say of him : " Of such is 
the Kingdom of Heaven." I do not wonder that the inspired old 
prophet, in writing of that glorious age when peace shall cover the 
face of the earth as the waters cover the face of the deep, should 
have said : " A little child shall lead them." 

I have come from the old state of North Carolina to bring the 
message of joy to you, my brethren, to-day, that at last, thank God, 
I believe a little child is leading our people. I have come to ask 
your sympathy, to ask your help, in following that leadership. 

You can measure the civilization of any land, you can measure 
the civilization in any home, by the place that a little child holds in it. 

And yet, after all the splendid talk we have heard here, back 
of this whole question of the care of a little child, lies a very prac- 
tical business question, and about that I wish to speak to you very 
briefly to-day. 

Back of this question of the trained teacher lies the practical 
business question of a workshop for the teacher. Back of this ques- 
tion of the education of the child lies the same practical business 
question of a place to educate him. In what sort of a place shall it 
be done ? That is a problem that we are wrestling with down in the 
Old North State to-day. 

What sort of a place must it be? You may judge the character 
of a business by the character of the place in which it is done. You 
must judge men's estimate of the character of their business by the 
character of the places in which they do business. What sort of 
business is this business of education? It has to do with mind and 
heart and soul, with the moulding of mind, with the shaping of 
character. It is sensible, it is insensible, and I think sometimes there 
is something which strikes deeper and lasts longer in that insensible 
education which comes from environment and association, than in 
all of your sensible education gathered from the books and learned 
from lessons. 



/. Y. Joyner. 195 

What, then, should be the character of the place in which such 
a sacred business is done ? Shall it be a home or a hovel, a place of 
cleanness or uncleanness, a place of ugliness or a place of beauty? 
Without, shall it be, as is too often the case, bleak, bare and barren, 
or shall the grass grow green and the birds sing and the flowers 
bloom and the trees wave their long arms about it, so that Mother 
Nature, God's great teacher, may whisper to the little ones her 
messages of peace and love? That is my ideal of what the place 
where the future citizens of the South shall be trained for citizenship 
and service should be. It should be a school home as well as a 
schoolhouse, a home prepared by the people of the community for 
the children of the community. That is my ideal. (Applause.) 

Now for a sad confession. " Confession is good for the soul" 
sometimes, and there is an encouragement in discouragement some- 
times. Down yonder in the Old North State 82 per cent of our popu- 
lation is rural and agricultural; nine out of ten of our children are 
absolutely dependent upon the public schools for their education. 
And yet I have to confess to you to-day that of the five thousand 
schoolhouses prepared for their education in the Old North State, 
four hundred and eighty-four white and three hundred and forty- 
five colored are rude log houses to-day ; I have to confess to you 
that of the five thousand and more school districts for white children 
and two thousand and more school districts for colored children, 
nearly a thousand are absolutely without schoolhouses for their 
children. 

But I come to declare to you that as rapidly as our people, in 
their poverty, can change those conditions, they are being changed. 
During the year ending June 30, 1901, one hundred and eight new 
homes for our school children were built, and during the year ending 
June 30, 1902, three hundred and thirty-two new school homes were 
built for our school children, leaving out Sundays, more than one 
new schoolhouse a day. And the good work is still going on. 

And now a story more significant still. Down there in the rural 
districts, where men must earn their hard dollars by the sweat of 
their brow, twenty thousand dollars and more was raised during the 
past year by private subscription for the erection of school homes 
for their children. (Applause.) 

I do not wish to be understood as boasting, for God knows the 
important task before me keeps me humble, not boastful, but we have 



ig6 The Conference for Education. 

accomplished three things there that will be helpful to us in pro- 
viding school homes for our children. In the first place, we have 
succeeded in securing a provision in our law which allows one-half 
of the expense of building a schoolhouse to be paid out of a special 
fund set aside out of the general school fund of the county, so that 
one-half of the burden of the building shall be borne by the whole 
county and the other half by the district itself. Further than that, 
and what I think is more significant and more hopeful, the last legis- 
lature established a loan fund of $200,000, accumulated with the 
state treasurer from the sales of public lands for many years, and 
appropriated also the future funds arising from the sale of hundreds 
of thousands of acres of public lands, to be used in the erection of 
schoolhouses, to be loaned on ten years' time at 4 per cent interest, 
to be returned one-tenth each year; so you see we have an endless 
chain, with $200,000 available the first year, and $20,000 available 
each year, until that day shall come when every child in North 
Carolina, white and black, shall have a school home of which the 
child and the community and the world need not be ashamed. 
(Applause.) 

The chairman said yesterday he had a detective after me to 
find me, and he has found me, and now I am going to take a little 
longer time than he thought. As is always the case, this plea of 
childhood for a home has reached at last the mothers of North 
Carolina, and they have banded themselves together in the Women's 
Association for the Betterment of Public Schoolhouses, and under 
their leadership much has been done and much will be done in the 
betterment of schoolhouses for our children. I wish I had time to 
speak to you more in detail about their work and commend their 
splendid example to you. (Applause.) 

I thank you for your attention and the chairman for his in- 
dulgence. Down in North Carolina and in all these Southern States 
of ours, the people have heard at last a voice and seen a vision — the 
voice of 

" An infant crying in the night : 

An infant crying for the light: 

And with no language but a cry." 

The vision of a mother in a little hovel which she calls home, with 
a little one given to her, sending to heaven the prayer of the mother's 
heart, that it may have a better chance in life than he, its father, or 



/. W. Hill. 197 

she, its mother, has had. The day is not far distant, I beheve, when 
every child in these Southern states shall have a chance to make the 
most of every power that God Almighty has given him. (Applause.) 

The President: — For further information upon the subject 
before us, let me refer you to the last report of Mr. Joyner to the 
legislature of North Carolina. If you are interested, send for that 
report and read every word of it. 

We will now have a discussion on " Public Education and the 
Local Tax," introduced by the Hon. I. W. Hill, state superintendent 
of education of Alabama. 

Public Education and the Local Tax. / 

By Hon. I. W. Hill, State Superintendent of Education for Alabama. 

Mr. President^ Ladies and Gentlemen: — I come with no pre- 
pared speech, for I felt that within the historic surroundings I would 
find here, and in the company of the noble band of earnest men and 
women who are in this presence, I could talk for ten minutes on 
public education and the local tax. 

Now I shall assume in this discussion that it is a conceded fact 
that the highest function of all government is the preparation of its 
citizens for useful lives. I believe that a government should do more 
than exercise police regulations and establish prisons for criminals. 
I believe that it should be a constructive agency, and should seek 
to elevate its citizens. Therefore I shall not argue the right of the 
state to levy a tax for schools. The history of the states of the 
American Union all show that this great principle is recognized, 
but I would bring to your attention, especially to the attention of 
the representatives of the Southern States, the fact that we who are 
such earnest advocates of state sovereignty and local self-govern- 
ment are often in opposition to that plan of procedure in reference 
to education, — a policy that obtains more largely in the region which 
has been influenced by Llamilton than in the states of the South. 
In the Northern States, if I understand aright, the proportion of 
money raised by general taxation is but from 5 to 10 per cent and 
the amount raised by local taxation is from 90 to 95 per cent. In 
the Southern States the local tax does not amount to more than 5 to 
10 per cent, and the state funds are from 90 to 95 per cent. 

In my State of Alabama, a state which, so far as natural 



198 The Conference for Education. 

resources are concerned, is without a peer in the American Union, 
until the constitution of 1901 the principle of local taxation was not 
recognized at all, and to-day we can levy by a three-fifths vote of 
the county only a tax of 10 cents on the hundred dollars. The same 
constitution which gives us that right declares that 30 cents on the 
hundred dollars, or nearly 50 per cent of the entire revenues of the 
State of Alabama, shall be set aside for public school purposes. 

In Georgia and the other states around us there has often been 
a difficulty in getting the local tax levied. Governor Candler, in 
his recent message to the legislature, called attention to this fact, 
and they are now seeking there an amendment to the constitution in 
order to make it easier to invoke the principle of local taxation. 
We shall seek in Alabama in the next four years to get as many 
counties as possible to levy the tax permitted, and we hope that at 
the end of four years we can secure an amendment to the constitu- 
tion giving a far larger recognition to the policy of local taxation; 
and within districts restricted within natural boundaries, placing a 
school within two and a half miles of every child. 

A few of the counties in Alabama which asked to be reserved 
from the inhibition against local taxation, reserving the right to 
levy local taxes for schools, have already acted upon their rights. 
I am proud to say that my own town, which reserved the right to 
levy a local tax of 50 cents on the hundred dollars, on the first of 
March, with practical unanimity, voted a tax of 25 cents, or enough 
to meet our needs. The town of Helman reserved the right and 
has also levied a tax. 

The schools of the South need three things — maintenance for 
the purpose of paying teachers' salaries, for the purpose of con- 
structing school buildings and for securing more adequate super- 
vision; they need teachers skilled in the art of teaching, and they 
need the supervision of expert men. 

Mr. President, I would say in conclusion that the South owes 
to the Southern Education Board a debt of great gratitude. You, 
sir, will be backed by the enthusiastic men and women of this whole 
Southland of ours, and, to paraphrase the words of one of Georgia's 
great statesmen on the Stars and Stripes, I will say in conclusion: 
" If this Conference will lift . the educational banner, Southern 
breezes will float it, Southern sons will lift it, Southern mothers will 
work for it, and, as the breezes extend it to the sky, we shall send to 



G. R. Glenn. 199 

heaven one universal chorus : Flag of Enlightenment, wave ever, 
that those who come after us may live lives worthy of freedom." 
(Applause.) 

The President : — The next address we will have is that of the 
Hon. G. R. Glenn. Those of us who are in this work know Dr. 
Glenn as former superintendent of public instruction of the state of 
Georgia, and now as assistant agent of the Peabody Board. I have 
the pleasure of presenting Dr. Glenn. (Applause.) 

Discussion of Previous Topic. 
By Dr. G. R. Glenn, of Georgia. 

Mr. President, as you have put me out of my place, I do not 
know but that I ought to do what Dr. McKelway did yesterday — 
steal that gavel of yours for a while. 

I have heard so much about Virginia and felt the atmosphere 
of Virginia so keenly since I have been here that I begin to feel as 
if I belonged to Virginia. I don't know but that the old colored 
preacher you had here in Richmond for so long was right after all 
when he said there were but four kinds of people in the world, Hot- 
tentots and Huguenots and Abyssinians and Virginians. (Laugh- 
ter.) You might throw away the other three and say there is only 
one kind of folks, Virginians. The people of Richmond have made 
us so comfortable that I can safely voice what is in the minds of all 
the guests here when I say we would like to be Virginians and are 
only sorry we are not. 

I am very glad there have been so many kindly and gracious 
things said, socially, privately and publicly here. I believe one of 
the most wholesome and beautiful things of a conference like this 
is the heart to heart touch and life to life contact we get here. I am 
especially glad that the spirit of kindliness takes the form of saying 
kindly things. I am so glad that you people have had so many 
kindly things to say about our noble chairman ; you have given him 
so much taffy while living that he won't need a particle of epitaphy 
when he is dead. (Laughter and applause.) 

Seriously, my friends, the great question before this body is not 
only this local tax question; it is not only the ideal teacher view 
of education; it is not only the schoolhouse problem of education. 
It involves all of these and more too. The real motive of it all 



200 The Conference for Education. 

is to save our children. That is what we are here for. We want 
to generate a spirit and power that every one of us can take back 
to the home circle or back to official life, and touch with that kindly 
and sympathetic spirit every human heart whose life touches our 
own. I tell you we need to do that kind of thing all over these 
Southern States of ours. Too many of our children are going down 
and down. The records of any county in Virginia or North Carolina, 
I expect, certainly in Georgia, if you investigate them, will show 
that the people almost of every county are spending more money 
year by year on the lost boys than they are spending on the boys that 
are not lost. The question with our people is to bring them to the 
theory, not only the theory but to the conviction and the practice, 
that it is better to tax ourselves heavily year by year to save all of 
our boys and all of our girls, rather than to tax ourselves grievously 
at the last to punish them when they have gone down and down on 
their way to hell. (Applause.) 

I might give you just one concrete case that would tell the 
whole story. A ruined, lost boy was brought to the city of Atlanta 
after he had slipped through the meshes of the social life in which 
he was born, after he had slipped through the environment of 
the little school life he had had, after he had gone away from all 
the wholesome influences of his home, and he went on the down- 
ward road until he became not only an outcast from society but 
he had come to believe that society was his worst enemy, and 
society began to hunt him down, as it will, and finally, before they 
caught him, that man had stained his hands with the blood of at 
least three of his fellow-men. When they caught him, they would 
not trust him in the miserable, wretched jail of his own county, but 
they brought him to the stone jail at Atlanta, and he was such a 
desperate criminal that they allowed no one to see him except the 
officers. One afternoon I heard that that boy was to be carried down 
to his county for trial, and I hurried to the train as he was leaving 
and caught it, and I found him in the front car with irons on his 
wrists and shackles on his ankles and chained to the seat, and, in 
addition, there were the sheriff and four men with Winchester 
rifles. I asked them if I might talk to the boy; they had never 
allowed me to talk to him while he was in prison, but finally they 
consented after they knew who I was. I sat down and probed into 
that lost boy's life, tracing it, as he gave it to me, from the begin- 



G. R. Glenn. 201 

ning, and before he finished the tears were not only in his own eyes 
but they were flowing down my cheeks, and I said : " My God ! Why 
could not something be done to save this boy before he got to this 
point \" 

At last there was nothing left between the boy and death except 
executive clemency. One day, as I stood in the capitol building, an 
old woman came leaning on the arm of another woman, her eyes 
sunken and the furrows plowed deeply on her face, and asked if she 
could see the governor. I told her the governor was busy that morn- 
ing and could not see her. She said : " I must see the governor ; 
to-morrow my boy is to die; take my name in and ask him to see 
me." When her name was taken to the governor, he came and took 
her wrinkled hand in his, but there was nothing he could say. 
" Madam," he said, " I have respited your boy twice to give him a 
chance. The law says he must die. God knows I am sorry for you ; 
I would take the woe from your heart if I could, but to-morrow your 
boy must die." When she saw there was no hope from the governor, 
she turned away, and as she groped her way out, she said : " Some- 
body ought to have saved my boy." 

That old woman was right. Somebody ought to have saved 
that boy. As I looked into his eyes that day and saw the unlimited 
depth of possibilities in his eyes, I said : " Would to God you might 
have had a chance." 

There are children all over this country of ours who are holding 
up their white hands and their black hands and asking you and me 
to give them a chance. What is our answer to the cry of the 
children ? 

Our country can never take its true place in the onward march 
of civilization, until we take all of these children by the hand, and 
bring them up that bright and shining way that leads to the table- 
lands of unhindered opportunities for all. 

In olden times men talked about the " divine right" of kings. 
To-day we are trying to make men understand the divine right of 
every child to an unhindered chance to be the best that his inheritance 
and environment will allow him to be — -with the added faith that the 
schoolhouse can eradicate much of the evil of a bad inheritance and 
tremendously develop and strengthen the good in an abnormal 
environment. 

But the schoolhouse costs something and our problem is to bring 



202 The Conference for Education. 

men to have such faith in childhood that they will be willing to pay 
the cost. To invest the people's money in the proper nurture of the 
children is to make sure of a republic for the future. Ignorance is 
the costliest thing in this world, and is not a remedy for anything. 
Ignorance is a local curse and must be removed by applying a local 
remedy. The ignorance of one child in any community is a constant 
menace to every other child in that community. The neglect of one 
endangers the safety of all. 

Again, the most depressing influence on the value of property in 
any community is the ignorance of the denizens of that community. 
That which enhances the value of property most is the intelligence 
of the masses in the community. A local tax for education, there- 
fore, is the surest means of increasing the market value of all taxable 
property. 

In the Northern and Western States the local tax for schools 
comes first, i. e., before the state tax. In the Southern States the 
state tax was first imposed, and it is hard to make the people see the 
value of local tax. In the North the people have secured from the 
General Government protection for their " infinite industries" and 
have taxed themselves locally to educate their industrious infants. 
The result is, they have had amazing prosperity with enormous 
increase of property values. In the South we have kicked against 
both the general tax for our infant industries and -the local tax for 
our industrious infants. The result is we have had a great burden of 
ignorance on our shoulders and we have taxed ourselves sorely to 
pay for the black sins of the masses. We are learning at last, thank 
God, that tax money raised to convict and punish a lost boy is a local 
tax and grievous to pay, and that we would better tax ourselves 
locally to save the children than to tax ourselves locally to convict 
and punish the children after they have gone to the bad. 

The hopeful thing in our educational outlook in the South 
to-day, is the increased willingness of the property-holding class to 
be taxed by districts or counties for the support of the schools. 
From the pulpit and the platform and from the judges' chair appeals 
are made for a local tax that were never heard before in the South. 
Every Southern governor is to-day preaching a local tax on the 
hustings, and urging a local tax in messages to the legislature. 

And so, Mr. Chairman, some of us begin to see the golden glint- 
ings of a brighter dawn for our children. We reverence all that is 



R. Fulton Cutting. 203 

good and great in our past. We shall teach our children to look with 
proud vision upon the bright and brightening names that have added 
lustre to the fame of our common country; but at the same time we 
shall teach our boys and girls that on the heights above the shining 
tablelands of the future, they may win triumph and conquest such as 
their fathers never won. The prayer of our New England poet we 
should teach to each child in our American schools, and the prayer 
should breathe at once the faith and the promise of the future. 
And I close with this prayer : 

" Build thee more stately mansions, oh, my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll ! 
Leave thy low vaulted past. 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell 
By life's unresting sea." 

The Conference then took a recess until eight o'clock p. m. 



EVENING SESSION. 

The Conference was called to order at 8 o'clock p. m. 

The President : — I now have the pleasure of presenting the 
first speaker of the evening, Mr, R. Fulton Cutting, of New York 
City, known throughout our whole country as the president of the 
Citizens' Union of New York. Mr. Cutting will address us upon 
the subject of the " Responsibility of Government for Public Edu- 
cation." 

Address, The Responsibility of the Government for Public 

Education. 

By R. Fulton Cutting, of New York. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, Among the many 
changes which have occurred in the conception of government dur- 
ing the past fifty years, scarcely any is more marked than the grow- 
ing sense of the responsibility of the community to all the indi- 
viduals composing it. That sense of social duty grew very slowly 
upon the Anglo-Saxon race during the first half of the nineteenth 



204 The Conference for Education. 

century; the individualism of Adam Smith and other writers prac- 
tically kept men apart, separated them economically, and, therefore, 
progress in the realization of this duty was slow during that period. 

If one might select any particular date in modern history from 
which the tide seemed to flow the other way, it would be that of the 
great English parliamentary reform of 1832; certainly into the ten 
years following that date there was crowded more constructive legis- 
lation for the benefit of humanity than any other decade the world 
had ever seen. 

I want to call your attention to the intimate connection between 
this sense of social duty and our democratic institutions. It is 
enirely true that while this great work of ameliorating the condi- 
tion of those who most need it, the looking after the physical con- 
dition of those most suffering, has been going on, education has 
been going on with ever-broadening scope, and yet the responsibility 
of the state for the education of the child rests on an entirely different 
basis. One cannot claim that the state is responsible to the child 
for an education, nor is it responsible to the parent for the educa- 
tion of his children; for, if we could imagine the state taking this 
responsibility and forcing every child's education into one mould, 
we would have a civilization as colorless as that of ancient Sparta. 
But the responsibility that the state has, is to see that every indi- 
vidual that goes to make up its body of citizenship shall have the 
opportunity to become worthy of the privilege. It is the education 
of the citizens of the future that gives the state the assurance that 
it will be saved from the menace of anarchy or despotism which is 
forever consequent upon an illiterate multitude. 

Education is in every sense positive, because it creates oppor- 
tunity, and opportunity creates a sense of responsibility operating 
through self-respect. I believe it to be true that both theory and 
experience unite in saying, and democracy attests the statement, 
that the human race can be trusted with every opportunity it has 
power to employ. 

There is another reason why the state owes it to itself to 
see that the individuals within its borders have the opportunity to 
acquire knowledge. The state is a moral organism, it possesses the 
power of growth. It cannot stand still, it must keep pace with the 
march of progress. Aristotle said : " The state is founded that men 
may live ; it exists that they may live nobly." This is the ideal of the 



R. Fulton Cutting. 205 

United States of America, that men may live nobly. A great French 
architect interpreted the meaning of the phenomenal church exten- 
sion in England immediately after the Norman conquest, by declar- 
ing it was not due to any deep religious feeling, but to the fact 
that the church was the source of stability and order and the only 
educational agency. And so, as the Norman laid stone on stone for 
the cathedral walls, he was building up not merely an ecclesiastical 
organization, but a state with enduring foundations. That is what 
education is to do for the human race. The idea of American 
civilization, as I understand it, is not merely to keep abreast of the 
march of the nations, it is to lead them all; it is to demonstrate 
that popular sovereignty, under what we call democratic institutions, 
shall prove itself to be better than any other form of government; 
that humanity and justice and virtue, under the rule of Demos, 
shall flourish better than under any other form of government. 
(Applause.) That ideal can only be realized by universal popular 
education. 

Now, as we come to this great subject of the responsibility of 
the state for the education of its citizens, I shall not attempt for 
one moment to address you on what the nation can do. Its responsi- 
bility admits of divided opinion. But there are certain constitu- 
tional obligations which prevent the nation from responding to that 
obligation as we might like. 

You remember that in the " Protagoras" of Plato the sophist is 
described as relating to Socrates what the origin of the state was. 
He says that Zeus, looking down on the human race, saw that men 
came together not for better, but for worse. So he decides that he 
will send them the great gifts of justice and reverence. Accord- 
ingly he calls Hermes and directs him, as his messenger, to bear 
those gifts to men. The messenger asks : " Shall I give them to a 
few, or to all ?" Zeus replies : " Give them to all. No state is safe 
unless every man is possessed of those qualities." 

The Southern states, or some of them, have lately disfranchised 
the negro. Face to face with an almost impossibly incongruous 
situation, a situation which gave rise to all sorts of demoralizing 
expedients to maintain the supremacy of the white race, they have at 
last, by constitutional measures, legitimatized an existing fact. Men 
and women of the South — for the women, although silent, have been 
a potent factor in this matter — it remains for you to justify your 



2o6 The Conference for Education. 

arbitrary measure. Arbitrary it has been, but you can justify it. If 
this deliverance from the bondage of an impossible situation induces 
in you an indifference to the future of the colored race, if it makes 
you less sympathetic, if it dulls your sense of responsibility for its 
future, alas for the South and alas for the nation ! But I am glad 
to note, in the reports that have come to us from the field of work, 
that the South has risen to her responsibility; that the growth of 
the sense of responsibility indicates you are justifying what would be 
otherwise an utterly unjustifiable situation. In so doing, you are 
placing at the doors of the men of the North the responsibility for 
a national duty. We want you to help us to fulfill that responsibility. 
It is through you that whatever we do must be done. You are the 
channel through which such generosity, or rather such justice I 
should call it, should travel, because we cannot forget that it was the 
ill-considered action of Northern legislators that thrust upon you 
the solution of this tremendous problem. We want you to come 
to the North and teach us. We want Virginia to come and plead 
for the needs of the Carolinas, and the Carolinas to plead for the 
needs of Georgia and Alabama, and Georgia and Alabama to plead 
for Mississippi; and the city of New York will plead for every 
state that once recognized the authority of the stars and bars. 
(Applause.) 

The President : — Now, ladies and gentlemen, we shall be 
addressed by Dr. Walter B. Hill, chancellor of the University of 
Georgia. When the Conference met at Athens last year, the home 
of his university, he felt that delicacy required that he should not 
be on our list of speakers. In the progress of time that barrier 
is removed, and we have him with us this evening to speak upon 
the serious and interesting topic of "Negro Education at the South." 
I have the pleasure of introducing to the Conference, Dr. Walter B. 
Hill, chancellor of the University of Georgia. 

Negro Education in the South. 
By Dr. Walter B. Hill, Chancellor of the University of Georgia. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, Why " in the South" ? 
Why is the problem of negro education a Southern problem? 
Obviously because the negro is in the South. But why is he here? 
Why is it that nearly forty years after emancipation, with free right 



Walter B. Hill. 207 

of egress, nine-tenths of the negroes are still found in the states in 
which they were once slaves and not in the states whose initiative 
made them free? Why is it that these eight millions of people who 
love to " travel on the cars" have not made the cheap and easy 
journey across the line? Why has there been no exodus, if there was 
near by a Canaan with no sea or wilderness between? The answer 
to this question, according to our local interpretation, is that the 
negro is in the South by his own choice ; because he is better treated 
here than elsewhere ; because his most important right — the right to 
make a living — is more completely secured. If these things were 
not true, it seems to us that there would be a Northern educational 
conference discussing at Philadelphia or Chicago the problem of 
negro education in the North or West. 

The Confederate Negro. — Recently a group of Confederate 
veterans were recounting stories of the war. One of them told of 
a faithful body-servant who had accompanied him to the field. 
The negro was captured by the Federal scouts and was given a 
place as cook for the colonel of a Federal regiment, with salary 
attached. He ran away from this cosy berth and returned to his 
master — ^bringing with him a sack of supplies and a box of the 
colonel's Havana cigars, on the plea that as he had been working 
for the colonel and the true owner had received no wages, some- 
thing was due. Then another veteran in the group told a story. It 
was of a day of fierce battle, of an officer shot to pieces while 
leading his regiment in a desperate charge — the word passed back 
the line — and then a negro darting forward into the very crest of 
the battle and in the leaden hail of bullets bearing back the body of 
his wounded master, and afterwards nursing him into life. When 
these stories had been rehearsed with that fullness of detail which 
was characteristic of the art of story-telling as practiced by the 
Southern gentleman of the olden time, one of the group, as if seized 
by a sudden inspiration, said : " Gentlemen, if I live to get to the 
Confederate Reunion at New Orleans next month, I am going to 
propose a monument. It is to be of black marble and" (if I shock 
you, remember I am quoting the words of another) " to be erected 
in honor of the ' Confederate nigger.' " (Applause.) 

My object in this allusion has been to enable me to say that the 
duty of the South to negro education, whatever we may find that 
duty to be, is a duty to the children and grandchildren of the Con- 



2o8 The Conference for Education. 

federate negro ; and this phase ought to include not only the faith- 
ful body-servant in war, but the old black mammy and the Uncle 
Remus who were objects of so much affection in every Southern 
household ; and indeed all the negroes in the South who cared for 
and protected the wives and children of the soldiers at the front 
and who — strangest anomaly in history — fed by their labor the 
armies that were fighting against their freedom. 

In September last a meeting of the county school superin- 
tendents of education in Georgia was held at Athens. It was the 
first of the series of similar conferences arranged by Dr. Buttrick. 
A place on the program was given to the subject of negro edu- 
cation, and Superintendent Gwaltney, of Rome, was appointed to 
lead the discussion. I well remember his opening remark. He said : 
" I shall begin by assuming that we are all lovers of the negro." As 
I heard his words, I could not avoid thinking how profoundly true 
they were, how naturally and cordially the superintendents accepted 
this definition of their attitude towards the subject; and at the same 
time I realized how these identical words, if they had fallen from 
the lips of a stranger, assuming the role of missionary, lecturer, or 
guardian, would have been liable to instant and hostile misinter- 
pretation. 

Another remark at the meeting which arrested attention was 
that of Superintendent Polhill, of Worth County, who, in speaking of 
the work at Tuskegee, said : " Booker Washington knows more about 
this matter than all of us put together." 

The Tutelage of Slavery. — The beginning of the education of 
the negro was the tutelage of slavery. The South does not deny 
the abuses of slavery and she rejoices in the great conclusion that 
property in man is forever overthrown; but she contemplates with 
some complacency the fact that the tuition of slavery developed the 
negro in a century and a half from the condition of the savage to a 
status where, in the judgment of those hostile to slavery, the negro 
was fitted for the privileges of American citizenship. No free civil- 
ized race ever made equal progress in emergence from barbarism in 
so short a time. The education of slavery was not in books, nor were 
books needed at the beginning. It was an education and discipline 
in labor and in practical ethics ; in the virtues of order, fidelity, tem- 
perance and obedience. Religious instruction was not neglected. 
There was recently published a letter of a young Methodist min- 



IValter B. Hill. 209 

ister in South Carolina who afterwards became a bishop of his 
church. The letter was written about 1840 and throws a side- 
light on the state of opinion at the time. He referred to the fact 
that he had recently received an appointment to labor among the 
negroes and expressed his sense of being honored by it, saying : " I 
have observed that only those who are well thought of by the bishop 
and the brethren receive appointments among the negroes." Slavery 
was the first chapter, the longest, and up to the present time the 
most fruitful chapter, in the history of negro education. 

Reconstruction Blunders. — The second chapter began shortly 
after emancipation and includes the blunders of the reconstruction 
period. The reaction against the past was natural. Luther said 
that " the human mind was like a drunken peasant on horseback — 
if you put him up on one side he will fall off on the other." As 
the teaching of books had been denied to the negro in slavery, so 
now it was assumed that the only education needed was to supply 
this omission, and accordingly an effort was made in schools and 
colleges to insert into the mind of the negro race, as by a surgical 
operation, the culture for which the Anglo-Saxon race liad been 
preparing through long centuries of growth. The results appeared 
to be disappointing to those who looked on the experiment with 
friendly eyes; and appeared in critical eyes in many instances gro- 
tesque. As the education of the negro under slavery had principally 
been the discipline of work, so now it was assumed that his training 
in industry would abide with him and that he needed no pedagogy 
in that direction. The result of this error was to create a body of 
opinion in the South that education so-called was spoiling the negro 
as a laborer and not fitting him for anything else. Both the mis- 
takes above mentioned abounded until it was seen that the need 
of the negro race was not so much a reversal of that education 
which began under slavery as a system that would supplement and 
develop it. Time forbids the definition and description of the 
new thought in education; but it is embodied in Hampton and 
Tuskegee as concrete examples. They are the pioneers blazing out 
the path and pointing the way. Their education is both academic 
and industrial, with the emphasis strongly on the latter, in view of 
present conditions and needs. 

Finally the Southern Educational Conference and the Southern 
Education Board came into life by the natural and unstudied law 
14 



2IO The Conference for Education. 

of growth, and their unique mission has been to bring the problem 
of education at the South, including, of course, the education both 
of the whites and negroes, into the national consciousness in a 
rational form. 

Nowhere has the wisdom of this movement been better exem- 
plified than in the characteristic thought that while the problem 
affects the nation, it chiefly concerns and must be chiefly worked out 
by the people who are at closest range. If those of other sections 
wonder that we in the South hesitate to apply educational principles 
that seem truisms elsewhere, they may profitably remember that we 
are in immediate contact with the painful and depressing elements 
of the problem which do not meet their vision — vast shiftlessness, 
vice and crime. Despite all this, we will not be pessimists ; we can- 
not quite be optimists, but we are left the healthy-minded and hope- 
ful resource of being meliorists, with faith in God and in the improv- 
ability of all His creatures. (Applause.) 

The Problem Remanded to the South. — The nation has in fact 
remanded the solution of the negro problem, including, of course, 
the problem of education, to the South. There were days when the 
Southern section of our country was threatened with Force bills 
and similar legislation. In those days our people feared that they 
would have cause to say to the Government, in the words of Grattan : 
" You have sown your laws like dragons' teeth and they have sprung 
up armed men." Happily, the danger was averted, but while it was 
threatening there were utterances in the South which might be 
gathered up from press, pulpit and platform literally by the millions, 
in which it was said that if the North would only let the South alone, 
the South would solve the problem in wisdom and in justice. These 
utterances were sincere and their fulfillment involves not only a 
plain duty, but also involves the strong point of the South, the 
point of honor. The attitude of the people of the North at this 
juncture cannot be reasonably interpreted as a desertion of the 
negro; it is due, as Mr. Cleveland said, to a growing confidence in 
the sincerity and good faith of the " respectable white people of the 
South." There are some to be found who say, or at least imply, that 
the South cannot afford to do full justice to the negro in the matter 
of education. They affect to fear that the result of such a policy 
will be to bring the negro into dangerous competition with the 
white race. There is no surer way in which a member of that race 



Waher B. Hill. 211 

can exhibit his un worthiness of the blood in his veins than, to enter- 
tain an apprehension that the negro can so overcome racial char- 
acteristics and the advantage of a start of at least two thousand 
years as to endanger the supremacy of that race. In contradiction 
of the apprehension referred to, I would say that the only thing 
which the South cannot afford in its relation to the negro race, is 
injustice. (Applause.) 

All history teaches that, injustice injures and deteriorates 
the individual or nation that practices it, while on the other hand, 
it develops patience — the nerve of the soul — tenacity and strength 
in the man or the people upon whom it is inflicted. There is nothing 
new in this doctrine. Plato said : " Better is the case of him wh|) 
suffers injustice than the case of him who does it." In " The Repub- 
lic" he rises to this climax : " Injustice makes a man or a society the 
enemy of all just men and above all of the gods, whose friends are 
the just alone." This is a magnificent statement of the existence of 
a moral order in the world. No member of the white race who 
shares its instinct of self-preservation should be willing, even on 
selfish considerations, to see the moral order which rules in the world 
driven to take the part of the other race. This and this alone 
would endanger the supremacy of the white race. This will not 
happen: for the South is ready to bring to this problem not only 
a spirit of justice, but of tenderness. I do not mean ideal justice, 
for this would be impossible, all at once, between races that had 
lately sustained the relation of master and slave, but I mean such 
approximation to justice as is possible for sincere and good men 
under the limitations of the case. In claiming an element even of 
tenderness in the spirit of the South, I am aware that this is not 
easily understood by those of other sections who have dealt only 
with " casual servants, querulous, sensitive, and lodged for a day in 
a sphere they resent" ; but there is a tenderness born of old Southern 
traditions drawn in with the mother's milk, a feeling which survived 
the unspeakable indignities of reconstruction, and will outlive the 
irritations of the present and future. (Applause.) 

What the South Has Done. — The next proposition to be 
affirmed is that the South has done much for the education of the 
negro and will take no backward step in this direction. The high 
authority of the United States commissioner of education is cited 
in support of the fact that since 1870 the South has disbursed for 



212 The Conference for Education. 

negro education $109,000,000 (Report of 1899-1900, Vol. 2, p. 
2501.) For every dollar contributed by the philanthropy of the 
North for this purpose, the South, out of her poverty, has contributed 
four dollars. It cannot be truthfully claimed that all the people of 
the Southern states are pleased with this situation. It must be 
frankly admitted that a very considerable number, though a minor- 
ity, are restive under it. It can be asserted, however, that the leaders 
of thought among the people are the friends of negro education. 
This statement is sustained by a recent symposium in which the 
views of prominent Southern men were expressed. There have been 
some suggestions to limit the funds for negro education to the 
taxes raised from the property of the negroes. This suggestion I 
learn has been put forward in North Carolina, but has been over- 
whelmed with confusion. It commanded more support in Florida, 
but has been defeated. I recently received a letter from a leading- 
public man in Georgia, one of the strongest members of the present 
general assembly, in which he said : " If you should attend the 
educational meeting in Richmond and the question of this legisla- 
tion should be broached, you can safely say to the conference that 
this particular bill" (to limit the funds for negro education to the 
taxes raised from that race) " will never become a law." 

To say that the South will take no backward step in this matter 
is to say that negro education will share in all the increase of public 
taxation from the rapidly developing wealth of the section. The 
policy of separate schools will, of course, be maintained ; and it is 
gratifying that this is not only the settled purpose of the whites, 
but that the intelligent negroes are coming to see that any blending 
of the races would be between the higher types of their people and 
the lower types of the white race, and that co-education of the races 
or any other intermingling is not to be desired from the point of 
view of the best interests of the negro race. A significant utterance 
was made at a recent state convention of county superintendents of 
education, in Macon, Ga., on April 14, 1903. The speaker was 
one of the ablest and most highly esteemed judges of the superior 
courts of the state. He advocated compulsory education, upon the 
ground that the doctrine of public education logically required this 
measure for its completion. He realized that the sensitive point in 
the discussion was the relation of the question to the negro. 

By way of anticipating possible objections, he delicately inti- 



Walter B. Hill. 213 

mated that doubtless in the actual execution of the law, white offi- 
cials would be more zealous to enforce it among the whites than 
among the blacks, but he added that this policy could not be depended 
on to affect the case to any large extent, because the negroes are 
making more efforts than the whites for the education of their 
children. He referred to sections where illiteracy among the negroes 
was decreasing and where illiteracy among the whites was in- 
creasing. After considering the question in its various lights, the 
speaker boldly declared that in spite of all objections that might be 
raised on the score of the negro, he favored compulsory education, 
and he clinched the point by a story. A preacher was laboring to 
infuse a revival spirit among his congregation. He himself was 
under the influence of grace, but he could not move his audience. 
Finally he began to picture the old ship of Zion starting from the 
shores of this world to the next — the awful peril of those who did 
not take passage, and as he described the ship just moving off, he 
extended an invitation to all his hearers to come to the altar. 
Nobody came forward until finally an old colored sister, who by 
courtesy was sitting back in the remotest corner of the church and 
who weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds, came slowly wad- 
dling down the aisle. " Come along, Aunt Dinah," he exclaimed, 
" I'll take you aboard if you sink the whole ship." (Applause.) 

Agricultural Education. — Negro education must be specialized 
to meet actual conditions. It must be adapted to meet industrial and 
agricultural needs. This does not mean that the three R's are not 
to be taught in the schools. The negro citizen needs primary edu- 
cation for the purposes described by Thomas Jefferson in his state- 
ment on this subject, which may be regarded as classic and final. 
Recently the largest and most successful farmer in Georgia, one 
who started thirty years ago without capital and has made himself 
a millionaire, who now works more than a thousand hands upon 
his place, and certainly knows as much as any one else on the subject 
of the negro laborer, was speaking about the kind of negro laborers 
who were the most valuable. He said emphatically : " I want a hand 
in the field to whom I can send a written inquiry or direction as 
to his work and who can return to me in writing an intelligent 
response." The common school education is not, therefore, to be 
supplanted ; unquestionably it should be supplemented, for the great 
masses of the negroes, with manual and agricultural training. 



214 ^'^^ Conference for Education. 

As far back as 1871, General Armstrong, a veritable seer, 
realized this truth in its application to the negro people. His words 
have recently been quoted by his worthy successor as still expressing 
the method and aim of the schools of 1902. He said: "The tem- 
porary salvation of the colored race for some time to come is to 
be won out of the ground." Mrs. Doubleday, in her plea for' nature 
study, estimates that 85 peir cent of those engaged in gainful occu- 
pations in the South are engaged in agriculture. If I knew any 
method of making these statistics sensational, I would adopt it in . 
order to emphasize the tremendous and pathetic significance of the 
situation — four-fifths of all the people engaged in one form of 
earning a living and the education of this enormous number unre- 
lated to their life-work! Not only unrelated in any helpful way; 
but in the past, the traditional method of training in the schools has 
actually tended to educate the children away from the soil. The 
illustrations in the text-books, both pictorial and otherwise, the 
heroes whose exploits affect the childish imagination, the descrip- 
tion of countries by their capitals and great cities, the very " sums" 
that are given in the arithmetics, all tend to turn the child's heart 
from rural life to the city. Under normal conditions, the first 
kindling of childish ambition in a boy ought to be a stimulus to 
rise in his condition : in the case of the country boy, this stimulus 
presents itself in the form of an ambition to get away from his condi- 
tion. The exodus from the country to the city cannot be arrested 
unless this whole tendency be changed, and there must be found a 
new line of teaching which will fix the affection upon the soil. 
" Where their treasure is there will their hearts be also." If it be 
true that " the function of education in a democratic society is to 
lift the whole population to a higher level of intelligence and well- 
being," then the education which concerns the interests of 85 per 
cent of the population is of transcendent importance. My convic- 
tion is that the most urgent demand upon educational philanthropy 
a,nd pedagogic genius in the South lies in the direction of relating 
education to the life and work of the agricultural masses. 

Higher Education. — The foregoing contentions are not in 
antagonism to the higher education of the negro, or rather, to be 
exact, of the limited number who are capable of receiving and using 
for their own advantage and the advantage of their race the higher 
education. The fact that for so many years Northern philanthropy 



■ IValter B. Hill. 215 

concerned itself exclusively with negro colleges in the South was 
unfortunate in its sectional implications ; and yet we do not find it 
in our heart to begrudge one dollar of the millions that have been 
given to negro institutions. The race must have its preachers and 
teachers — its leaders of thought. The higher education is necessary 
in order that the " lower" education suitable for the masses may be 
rationally planned and conducted. Those who are qualified for pro- 
fessional life as lawyers and physicians ought to have the oppor- 
tunity for their training. It seems to me that the stoniest heart 
cannot withhold sympathy for the sad lot of the exceptionally gifted 
negro. His life, North or South, involves many painful experiences ; 
but, for all that, no one would seek to suppress his education as 
a means of promoting his happiness. We cannot too often say with 
Dr. Curry : " Ignorance is not a remedy for anything." 

The most vivid concrete illustration of the progress of the negro 
in higher education was the Negro Young People's Christian and 
Educational Conference at Atlanta, August 6-10, 1902. It numbered 
delegates from all the Southern states. On the program were 
M. A.'s, Ph. D.'s, D. D.'s, and bishops. There were so many D. D.'s 
as to remind one of Richelieu's threat that he would make so many 
dukes in France that it would be equally a disgrace to be one and 
a disgrace not to be one. The program included all topics related 
to the developrhent of the negro race. Many thousands of negroes 
attended the conference. Although they filled the street cars to 
overflowing, crowding out the citizens, yet so admirable was the 
conduct of the crowds and so satisfied were the people of Atlanta 
of the high character and usefulness of the conference that they 
cheerfully submitted to the inconvenience, and the city dailies were 
unstinted in their praises of the conference, the speakers, and the 
audiences. A pessimist who doubted the progress of the negro 
race •would have been convinced against his will by witnessing 
the convention and reflecting that only thirty-seven years had 
elapsed since these people were unlettered slaves. If L were asked 
to point out the high-water mark of negro progress, I should not 
hesitate to say that it was at this Atlanta conference, at the point 
where, under the general topic " What Improvements Can be Made 
in the Religious Worship of the Churches," the subject of revivals 
was under review. 

To be sure, there was no one there to agree with Dr. G. Stanley 



2i6 The Conference for Education. 

Hall that conversion is a phenomenon of adolescence ; or to analyze 
it psychologically in connection with the subliminal consciousness, 
as Professor William James has recently done in his " Varieties of 
Religious Experience" ; but while the discussion assumed the pres- 
ence of the Divine element in religious life, it was frankly recog- 
nized that nervous excitement played too large a part in negro 
revivals and its disturbing influence was unanimously deprecated. 

In the education of the negro, provision should be made for 
ethical teaching. The objections both from evangelical and non- 
religious sources to the introduction of moral training in the public 
schools are rapidly diminishing in intensity. This topic cannot be 
developed here; but the reasons why ethical education is specially 
needed by the negro lie on the surface of the case. 

In conclusion, I may say that the three periods in the history of 
negro education may be expressed in terms of the title of the book 
which had so great an influence on the slavery issue. " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin" may not be read by future generations, but it will always be 
referred to as a great historical document. For that reason I am 
glad that in its pages only one cruel slaveholder is portrayed and he 
was not a Southern man. The period of slavery, then, may be 
described as Uncle Tom in His Owner's Cabin. 

In the second period we see Uncle Tom without a Cabin. This 
period presents the era of reconstruction, when alien adventurers, 
foisted into power on the shoulders of the black masses, played 
such fantastic tricks before high heaven in the name of government 
as the world has never witnessed since the days of Masaniello. 
During this period the negro was more nearly a slave of selfish and 
cruel masters than ever before. He was promised forty acres and 
a mule, but he got neither these things nor any value received ; 
so that the era is not inaptly described as Uncle Tom without a 
Cabin. • 

The third era is that which is being ushered in under the wise 
leadership of Booker Washington, when the negro is becoming a 
home-maker, bound to the soil, a good citizen. There is no race 
problem as between the good citizens of the South among the whites 
and the good citizens of the South among the blacks. The solution 
then of the negro problem so far as we can see it within that imme- 
diate future which may be forecast from the past and the present, 
and beyond the limits of which it is idle for us to seek to penetrate, 



The Committee on Resolutions. 217 

is Uncle Tom in His Own Cabin, or I should prefer to say, in his 
own Home. (Long applause.) 

The President : — We will now have a report from Mr. Richard 
Watson Gilder, of New York, on behalf of the committee on resolu- 
tions. 

Resolutions of the Conference. 

Mr. Gilder : — Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, When 
asked to state the hour of my arrival in this city on the present occa- 
sion, I wrote my host that I did not know, as I had tried forty years 
ago as a small boy to reach here, but had not succeeded ; I was inter- 
rupted somewhere about Gettysburg and made to go home, where 
I suppose I belonged. I will say that I tried to hold up General 
Lee's army. Yesterday I came here and shed tears at the splendid 
reference made to him from this platform by another Northerner, — 
so it appears that " time has his revenges." 

I now wish to make this acknowledgment for the members of 
this Conference of Education: 

" We, the members of the Sixth Conference for Education in 
the South, coming from many sections and various states, desire to 
express our keen appreciation of the generous and gracious hospi- 
tality of the people, including especially the officers and members of 
the local committee, the governor, lieutenant-governor and other 
members of the state government, of the organizations which joined 
in the invitation, the press of Richmond and the associations, clubs 
and individuals who have so kindly opened their doors to the dele- 
gates and guests. 

" We have derived pleasure and inspiration, not only from the 
interchange of information and opinion on the immediate subjects 
of the Conference, but also from the spirit of good-will, of enter- 
prise and of patriotism which characterizes this city of so great 
memories and heroic traditions." 

The President : — " The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth vio- 
lence and the violent take it by force." I believe I never was the 
subject of such gentle and beautiful violence as that which sur- 
rounded me this evening just before coming here. It was a corps 
of ladies representing this city, bringing a request — and the only 
shadow of a request that has come from Richmond since we have 
been here, except requests to receive gracious hospitality, the only 



2i8 The Conference for Education. 

request of an)^ nature that has reached this body ; and I would be a 
hard-hearted sort of czar of the Conference if I did not yield to that 
request, especially as it was one so beautiful and so simple and I am 
sure compliance with it will be so agreeable to this audience. It 
was simply that I should ask Mr. Mabie to say something (Ap- 
plause), and Mr. Mabie will say something. 

Address by Mr. Mabie. 
Mr. Hamilton Wright Mabie: — Mr. President, Ladies and 
Gentlemen, I suppose, if I were a politician, I should begin by say- 
ing that your imperial voice has summoned me out of my delightful 
silence and that I present myself as a victim. This is the first unkind 
act, Mr. Chairman, that I have ever received at your hands. And 
yet, because I have as much right to speak for the South as for the 
North, if alTection and sympathy and interest give a man a claim 
to represent a section or part of a country, I am glad of the oppor- 
tunity of saying a word to you to-night without premeditation. 

It has not been a good place or a favorable time to prepare one's 
self for work since we have been here. I appreciate the sentiment of 
ithat Virginia gentleman who said the other day that when he died 
he wanted to die on Virginia soil, because the transition to heaven 
would be less abrupt. Some of us feel that in the last few days we 
have seen about us here heavenly embodiments of what we hope to 
see when we arrive at that happy stage. It has always been said 
of the North that it was never safe when it brought itself in con- 
tact with the South, and I suppose I may recall here that happy 
misquotation : 

" Oh, woman, in our hours of ease, 
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please ; 
But seen too oft, familiar with thy face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." , , 

The Southern Education Board, to which I owe my education 
out of sectionalism into nationalism, was organized several years 
ago. Every visit to the South since has made me more of an Ameri- 
can and less of a Northerner, and my heartfelt joy in this movement 
has had its cause in the perception of the fact that nothing we can 
do is half so unifying as the joining of the two sections of the 
country in the pursuit of the highest enhghtenment and the highest 
interests. 



Hamilton Wright Mabie. 219 

' Education is no longer a matter of choice, it has ceased to be 
.such for reasons beautifully and lucidly sketched last night by Dr. 
Peabody; it has become a necessity for the human mind. Nothing 
remains as it was; all things are in change and movement. The 
very earth on which we live is every year changing its form ; its 
shore lines are not to-day what theiy were ten years ago; and we 
know from what the astronomers tell us that there is not a star in 
the sky which is not constantly changing. The institutions under 
which we live are constantly readjusting themselves to the new 
needs of modern thought in our modern times. Government, 
founded on certain great principles, is constantly readjusting itself 
to new contingencies and fresh problems. The churches to which 
we belong, while holding to certain ancient facts, constantly change 
their methods of dealing with conditions. In this great world of 
change, is it possible that you and I can remain stationary? Is it 
possible that there is any longer any such thing as a finished educa- 
tion? Is it possible any longer that any man or woman can avoid 
that one process which enables us to understand these manifold 
changes? For that is what education is. For practical reasons, 
living as we do to-day in a world of competition, not, however, in 
the old struggles of armies, but in the new warfare of peace, this 
modern world is to lie not in the hands of the physically strong, not 
in the hands of the purely inventive, not in the hands even of the 
industrious, but in the hands of those with whose ability, integrity 
and industry science is allied in intimate fellowship and co-operation. 
The modern world of business belongs to the educated man, and to 
the educated man alone. (Applause.) 

Only a few years ago we supposed that the higher education 
was for the professional man alone. To-day it is just as necessary 
for the business man as for the professional man, and every year 
trained men and trained women are more and more at the front. 
There is no tragedy of modern times that appeals to me more by its 
pathos than the tragedy of the half -trained man and the half -trained 
woman — the tragedy of the man who says he must have work to do 
and will do anything, and when you want to know what he can do 
you find he can do nothing; the tragedy of the girl who is willing 
to do anything that is honorable for her living, and you ask her 
what she can do and she can do nothing. This is the tragedy which 



220 The Conference for Education. 

we find to-day, and it is a tragedy which the school alone will fully 
enable our people to escape. 

I look for great things from the South with her new force and 
enthusiasm in her educational problems. It has been pointed out 
that the danger of the higher education lies in the likelihood that 
the personality of the man or woman may be lost in the generality 
of the method. I thank God that the genius of the South has made 
it a hero-worshiping section, and I pray God that you may always 
remain a hero-worshiping section. The genius of the South will 
hold the man and woman superior to all methods and will subordinate 
education to the liberation of the individuality of the soul. For the 
end of education is not to make all alike — all members of an academic 
group, bearing the same stamp, the stamp of what we call culture. 
The end of all education is to set free that individual power which 
resides in every human spirit and which is the only individual 
gift or contribution each man or woman can make to the welfare of 
society. 

So, by reason of the necessity of the modern time in man's 
relation to the universe, by reason of the necessity of the modern 
time in man's relation to the open field of competition, education 
cannot come too soon, it cannot come too generally, it cannot come 
too high, for the whole people. And I welcome the new interest and 
enthusiasm of the South, because I believe that with its firm grasp 
and its inherent love of the personification of great qualities, it will 
introduce into education a new element in which perhaps the North 
has been somewhat weak. I believe it will introduce the element of 
sentiment and of poetry; in other words, it will bring back again 
that old power of imagination which has so largely escaped from 
our educational systems. 

Education is a great creative force in the world. As I look back 
on that one race which put its touch on every form of material, 
which made everything it touched final and beautiful — when I look 
back at that race I find this significant fact, that its teacher was a 
poet, and from a poet it learned its religion, and from a poet it got 
its science and its history, and at a poet's feet it learned the tradi- 
tions of its race. And I believe that our race will not be free again, 
in the larger sense which implies liberation of the spirit, until once 
again there is a poet in the college and in the machine-shop, and the 
imagination of the world, stimulated by a richer training, does its 



Lyman Abbott. 221 

work as it does not do it to-day, and men are set free by the freeing 
of the individual power that is in them. So I welcome every sign of 
the new growth of the new South, and of the new growth of the 
North, and of the new growth of the nation, that is to be, that is 
already in process of being ; a great nation, at the end of the period 
of sectionalism and provincialism. (Applause.) 

I have high hopes for the future. I expect no perfection, no 
sudden solving of problems. But I do look for the better day, the 
better ideals, the new unity that is to be brought about by devotion 
to the high ends of enlightenment. And as I close, I recall to your 
minds the words of one of the greatest idealists of the last century : 
" As yet lingers the twelfth hour and the darkness, but the time 
will come when it shall be light, and man shall awaken from his 
lofty dreams and find his dreams all true and that nothing is gone 
save his sleep." (Applause.) 

The President: — I now have the pleasure of introducing to 
the audience Dr. Lyman Abbott, editor of The Outlook, who will 
favor us with some of his " Impressions of the Conference." 

Address — Impressions of the Conference. 
By Dr. Lyman Abbott, of New York. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, The chairman has told 
you what I am to give you — not impressions, but my impressions 
of the Conference. To have gone about and endeavored to get from 
different persons different impressions, and then to have woven them 
together, would have transcended my ability and would have afforded 
you only a crazy-quilt when the work was done. If, in the remarks 
that I address to you, I shall seem somewhat egotistical, the fault 
lies with those who have selected this subject and have told me to 
tell you how this Conference has impressed me. 

The first thing that I am impressed with is the extraordinary 
hospitality of the city of Richmond. Whether all the South is 
equally hospitable I have yet to learn. From the first evening when 
the governor welcomed us here with those gracious words, until 
to-night, when presently we are to go to the executive mansion 
and there be hospitably received by him and his wife, every hour 
would have been one of serious temptation to neglect the more 
serious business of the Conference, had not our chairman put us on 



222 The Conference for Education. 

our guard against the tempters. For rnyself, I came to Richmond 
supposing that I was coming among strangers. It is hardly too 
much for me to say that I am going away under possibly the pleas- 
ing Elusion that I have more friends in Richmond than in any other 
city of the United States. (Applause.) 

The next thing that impresses me about this Conference is that 
the American people are an eloquent people. The oratory of every 
type and kind that has been presented from this stage has been 
such as to occasion a succession of surprises. Our president, who 
in that first evening put before us a window so transparent that we 
forgot its framing in the clear light of truth that shone through it; 
Professor Dabney, whose wide learning is such as to recall the 
famous couplet of Goldsmith in the Deserted Village — I shall not 
quote it, for I have not my associate's ability at verbal memory — 
respecting the small head and the great amount he knew ; Dr. 
McKelway, whom we of the North are proud to recognize as our 
representative and who put into his tribute to Stonewall Jackson, 
Robert E. Lee and Mr. Grady all that we felt a great deal better 
than we could have said it, and whose eloquence recalled to me at 
least the New Hampshire farmer's criticism of Daniel Webster, 
" Every word he said weighed a ton" ; Mr. Claxton, who took us up 
into his native state and showed us the schoolhouse with its grounds 
and its equipment, so simply and so perfectly as to fill me, a native 
Yankee who had thought that New England was a land of school- 
houses, with a yet unabated envy; Dr. Kirkland, whose graceful 
oratory was such as to make me believe, if I had studied in his univer- 
sity at his feet, he could have made a scholar even of me ; and Dr. 
Peabody, who, when he told us a story, made us wish that he was 
always telling us a story, and, when he left his story, made us wish 
that he was always preaching. (Applause.) Those are a few, 
and only a few, of the men whose varied eloquence has impressed 
me, with the simple, sincere and genuine oratory of this occasion. 

I have been impressed, too, with the fact that our faces are 
turned toward the future. Two years ago, when I was present at 
the meeting of this Conference at Winston-Salem, it was engaged 
in discussing a problem which now seems to be settled. You are 
no longer questioning whether the negro should be educated; the 
thing to be determined now, and the only question now open, is how 
and in what manner. You are no longer discussing the question 



Lyman Abbott. 223 

whether the South, out of its poverty, can afford to pay a school 
tax for the education of all of its children. You have answered the 
question put two years ago by, if my memory serves me right, 
Professor Dabney, "Can you afford not to do it?" and you have 
answered : " No, we cannot afford not to do it." You have answered 
the question: "Is it possible for the rural South, with its widely 
scattered population, to maintain an adequate system of education 
for its children?" by showing how you are gathering the children 
together in schoolhouses and putting them under the right influ- 
ences and the right instructors. 

I am impressed, too, by the character of the educators into 
whose hands you of the South are committing this work. One 
gentleman on this platform told us there were half a million teachers 
in the United States, and added that as he sometimes went to school- 
houses he was very glad the terms were no longer. It is no doubt 
true that all teachers do not succeed in their vocation as well as we 
wish they did, as well as they wish they did. But it is said that 
90 per cent of the merchants of the United States fail at one time 
or another in their lives. I judge, then, that all of the merchants do 
not succeed as well as they wish they did. The doctors do not cure 
all the patients they would like to cure; the lawyers do not win all 
the cases they would like to win ; and the ministers have not yet 
converted all of their congregations. 

It has been my privilege to visit some of the schools of the 
North and to know something of their educational leaders, to visit 
the schools of Canada and to visit the schools of Great Britain — 
the so-called publig schools, the board schools and the church schools 
— and to talk with their leaders of education ; and one of my impres- 
sions is this — that the men who are leading this great educational 
movement in the South are certainly fully the peers of the leaders 
of education of the Northern states, Canada, or Great Britain — in 
short, of the Anglo-Saxon people of the globe. (Applause.) 

And I am impressed by another conviction, which is, that the 
North and the South are one in this matter. I am not one of those 
who recommend forgetfulness of the past. I do not wish to forget 
the past. I hope you will not forget the past. It is too solemn, 
it is too sacred, it is too full of splendid and awful associations for 
us ever to forget it. We are neither to forget the past nor to live 
in the past, but, out of that past, to gather strength for a nobler and 



224 ^^^^ Conference for Education. 

more splendid future. (Applause.) We are never to forget what 
we had not learned until the Civil War — to honor and respect one 
another, one another's courage, one another's heroism, and one 
another's loyalty to duty as we severally understood it. And in the 
mutual confidence and esteem which in my heart I believe that awful 
war has wrought into North and South alike, we are to go forward 
and achieve our splendid destiny. We are to be rooted in the past, 
and are not to break our roots, but our buds and blossoms are in the 
future, and out of that rooting in the past we may produce a splendid 
fruitage for the future. 

So much for my impressions of this specific Conference. I have 
some impressions respecting the great movement which this specific 
Conference indicates and interprets. Let me turn to those. 

I believe it has been about fourteen years since two young men, 
both of whom have been on this platform and I believe are at least 
in this building to-night, started on an evangelistic campaign in 
North Carolina, but an educational evangelistic campaign. With 
brave hearts, with strong courage, with high hopes, and with the 
audacity that youth possesses and old age ought never to lose, they 
resolved that their state should hear the message that had been borne 
in upon their hearts, the message of universal education for all the 
children of the state. They have to-night received the reward which 
is always paid to heroic industry and courageous service, not always 
paid while men live, for God has other reckoning days than those 
which end with the sunset of this life. We give all honor to these 
two young men. Dr. Alderman and Dr. Mclver, the first prophets, 
I think, of this great educational movement. 

Now, what is it? A revival of education? Yes. An estab- 
lished public school system? Yes. Better schoolhouses, better 
equipment, better teachers, better universities? All of that. But, 
if I read the signs of the times aright, far more, immeasurably more 
than that. It is a revival of all that goes to make life splendid. 

It is first of all a revival of industry. I do not know how 
it is with you here, but in the North I constantly meet with men 
who seem to think that industrial education has somehow or other 
a slur or stain upon it, that industrial education is second-rate educa- 
tion. Now we are beginning to learn what has been so well put 
on this platform, that education is for service, and that that educa- 
tion is highest which best fits a man to render the service he can 



Lyman Abbott. 225 

best render to the world. It is legitimate for me here to-ri,ight 
to be a plagiarist, legitimate for me to borrow from the speakers 
who have gone before me all the good ideas I can remember, and I 
do it freely. We are beginning to learn that education is service, 
and that there is no one standard for all men in education any 
more than there is one standard for all men in service. Our educa- 
tion in the past has been for the three learned professions, doctor, 
lavx^yer and minister, but if we are all doctors, where are the patients, 
and if we are all lawyers, where are the clients, and if we are all 
ministers, where are the patiently listening congregations? We 
need, I think, to broaden education at the base, even if we have 
to cut it off a little at the top. We need education that shall be 
inclusive of all men and all women, but that shall be so because it is 
inclusive of all things and all topics. We need the educated farmer 
as well as the educated doctor and the educated lawyer. The first 
service a man can render to any community is supporting himself, 
and the next is supporting his wife and his children, and the next is 
rendering what aid he can to the community. I dare to say that it 
is much better for a man to pound an anvil and make good horse- 
shoes than it is for a man to pound a pulpit and make bad sermons. 

I do not object to the higher education for any class in the 
community. I stand for throwing the doors wide open to the 
highest and best education for every class in the community. But 
we must begin with the alphabet, not with the words of four sylla- 
bles, and we must teach men how to earn their living before we teach 
them what are called the higher departments of learning. When 
this educational revival has accomplished what some of us foresee, 
the need of drudgery will be banished from the earth and the man 
with the hoe will no longer be seen with bent figure, stunted intel- 
ligence, bereaved heart and saddened affections, but he too will be 
a full-fledged, large minded, great-browed man. This is what I 
think of this great educational revival or revival of industry, which 
will make all industries vital, because all industries are human, all 
industries are educative and all industries are intelligent. 

This movement is also a revival of liberty because it is laying 
the only possible foundations for liberty. Liberty is not lawlessness. 
We are all under the government of law, whether we like it or not — 
laws of nature, laws of physiology, laws of society. We no more 
make the social laws and the political laws than we make the 

15 



226 The Conference for Education. 

physiological laws. They are eternal, they are divine, God has made 
them. Justice has its throne in the bosom of Almighty God. No 
man is yet fit to be free, or able to be free, who is not intelligent 
enough to understand the law and loyal to obey it. (Applause.) 
Aristotle divided government into three kinds, government by the 
one, government by the few and government by the many. We are 
trying here in America a new experiment. Our American doctrine 
is that every man shall be free to govern himself in all of those things 
that only concern himself, and every group of men shall be free 
to govern themselves in those things which only concern themselves, 
and every state shall be free to govern itself in those things which 
only concern itself, and the nation shall be free to govern itself 
in those things which concern itself. Now, at the base of that is the 
capacity of the individual man to govern himself. One thousand 
times nothing is still nothing. If each one of those men has not 
in himself the power of self-government, put a thousand together, 
put a million together, and call them the state ; then the state has no 
power of self-government. 

It has been sometimes . suggested to me (by no member of this 
Conference) that some topics of discussion are better avoided in 
such a gathering as this. But I think that no assembly in this 
country. North or South, desires a speaker to speak anything but 
his sincere convictions. (Applause.) We are beginning to learn, 
North and South, that the suffrage is a prerogative and a duty, 
rather than a right. (Applause.) We are beginning to learn, 
North as well as South, that manhood suffrage means manhood first 
and suffrage afterwards. (Applause.) We are beginning to learn 
in the North what seems to me should always have been an axiom, 
that no man has a right to govern his neighbor who has not the 
intelligence and conscience to govern himself. (Applause.) 

I have spoken as if this were a late learning on the part of the 
North. It is, and it is not. If there was any man in the North 
who has a right to be called the friend of the negro, if there was 
any man in the North known as the uncompromising opponent of 
slavery, if there was any man in the North who stirred the heart 
of the nation before the war. and was brave and resolute throughout 
the war, it was Henry Ward Beecher. In 1865, two months after 
the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and four months before the 
reconstruction measures were brought before Congress (which 



Lyman Abbott. 227 

some of us in the North, as many of you in the South, wish had 
never been adopted), Henry Ward Beecher said: " AH the laws 
in the world cannot lift a man higher than the natural forces put 
him. You can pass laws saying that the colored men are your 
equals, but unless you can make them thoughtful, self-respecting, 
intelligent, unless, in short, you can make them what you say they 
have a right to be, those laws will be in vain. I am satisfied that 
while we ought to claim for the colored man the right of the elective 
franchise, you will never be able to secure it and maintain it for 
him except by making him so intelligent that men cannot deny it 
to him." 

I wish that all of the North had agreed with Henry Ward 
Beecher and Abraham Lincoln that those propositions were true, and 
I should like to print them and put them in every schoolhouse in the 
South with the name of Henry Ward Beecher at their foot. 

This educational revival means also a revival of the home. It 
is no mere accident that the child labor laws have been recently intro- 
duced into some states and the endeavor to enforce them increased 
and intensified in others. For the movement for the education of 
the child and the movement for the protection of the child are all 
parts of one great movement. We are learning in America that it 
is a very one-sided protective system that protects the manufac- 
turers and does not protect the children, that it is a poor economy 
that destroys children to make cheap goods. (Applause.) You 
cannot have a child working in the mines or in the factory and 
studying in the school; and the movement to take the child into the 
school is by necessity a movement to take him out of the factory. 

We have made but little gain if we have abolished a system that 
sold a man in the market-place to the cotton fields, and yet allow the 
child to be sold to the cotton factory. ( Great applause. ) 

And, again, this revival of education is a revival of religion. 
What does education mean ? It means the development of the whole 
man. This is the common chord of this Conference — education is 
the development of man. From it every theme has gone forth, and 
to it every theme has returned again. That is the aim of the school- 
house, that is the end of education. Now, what is the end of the 
church, and what is the office of religion ? 

" And he gave," said Paul,/' some, apostles ; and some, prophets ; 
and some, evangelists ; and some, pastors and teachers ; for the 



228 The Conference for Education. 

perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edify- 
ing of the body of Christ : Till we all come in the unity of the faith, 
and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto 
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 

That is the end of the church, that is the office of religion. The 
office of the schoolhouse is to make men and women; the office of 
the church is to make men and women. Perfect manhood is the end 
and goal alike of the teacher and the preacher. 

It has been said here upon this platform that the courthouse 
and the church would perhaps cease to be the center of the com- 
munity and the schoolhouse would take their place. I should be 
sorry to see the schoolhouse take the place of the church. I do not 
think it ever will take the place of the church. No education of the 
intellect, no education of the hand, no education, primary, industrial, 
or intellectual, can take the place of the spiritual development, the 
fountain of which is God and the means and instrument of which 
is the Church of Christ. (Applause.) But this school may teach 
the church that principle of unity which it has forgotten. It is a 
pity that you and I, who have a common faith in God as our 
Father, a common faith in Jesus Christ as our Saviour and 
Redeemer, and a common faith in the brotherhood of man, should 
be divided into factitious sects by conventions and dissensions the 
meaning of which, for the most part, none of us know. (Applause.) 
But while we are so divided into our varied churches, from our varied 
pulpits we may give the right hand of fellowship to the men and 
women who are bringing the children of all faiths together under a 
common roof and a common instruction. Baptist and Pedobaptist, 
Methodist and Episcopalian, Catholic and Protestant, Jew and 
Christian, all within four walls, all under the same teacher, all 
seeking the same end. With the preacher and the teacher seeking 
the development of the perfect manhood, perhaps we in the churches 
are yet to learn from the schoolhouses what the unity of the church 
creeds is. Perhaps we in the churches, perhaps we in the pulpits, 
are yet to learn from the schoolhouses that a perfect man is worth 
more than a perfect creed or a perfect ritual. 

So I see in this revival of education a movement that is going 
to affect all of our congregations, that is going to make us see that 
our divisions are unimportant and our unions important, that is 



Lyman Abbott. 229 

going- to give us a religion less hysterical mentally, a religion of hand 
and heart whose inspiration is God and whose end is service. 

One other thing I see, or think I see. Each century seems to 
have -its own distinctive characteristic. The lines which divide the 
centuries are but artificial. Yet, speaking broadly, the keynote of 
the nineteenth century was liberty. The nineteenth century saw 
the liberation of the serfs in Russia, the overthrow of the feudal 
system of Europe by the victories of Napoleon, the emancipation of 
Italy, France set free from Bourbonism and Spain set free from 
Bourbonism, and every state in Europe except Russia made in some 
sense a free state. I wonder how many in this house know that the 
two oldest buildings in the world devoted to parliamentary purposes 
are the capitol at Washington and the statehouse at Boston? That 
is what the nineteenth century has done, it has set men free — at the 
cost of blood and treasure and tears and woe, but it set men free. 

That is the message of the nineteenth century. What of this 
twentieth? Last spring I was in Russia. Our American consul 
brought me photographs and showed me what the Russians are 
doing for the development of their peasant population. I came to 
Italy, and they showed me what the Italian army is doing for educa- 
tion in a common language. I came to France and found that edu- 
cation was the great question there, whether it should be carried on 
by the church or by the people and for the people. I crossed the 
channel to England and found that the problem which was stirring 
them to their depths was an educational question — should it be under 
the church or under the government, should it be religious or unre- 
ligious. I came here, and here also is the great movement for the 
education of men. In Russia, in France, in Germany, in Spain, in 
England, in America is the same great movement. There are some 
great currents that flow like the Gulf Stream. In such a stream we 
are. The current is greater than man can control. And the end and 
meaning of the educational revival is a new and further step toward 
the development of that manhood which we call the Kingdom of God 
upon earth. Nineteen hundred years ago men followed a star and 
it hung over a Babe in a manger, and they found there the Infant 
Christ. Again the star appears, again we follow it, again it hangs 
over a babe, not cradled in luxury, not housed in a palace, but the 
child of hunger, the child of ignorance, the child of want — the child 
in the manger. To take this child and make of it a child of God in 



230 The Conference for Education. 

truth, a child of God in very deed, that is the mission of the twen- 
tieth century, that is the meaning of this educational revival. (Pro- 
longed applause.) 

The President: — Language would fail to express on the part 
of this Conference the feeling of gratitude for the gracious hospi- 
tality of the people of Richmond, which fills all our hearts. Perhaps 
the nearest approach to such expression that could be made is the 
report of the committee on resolutions, which is before the Confer- 
ence, but has not yet been acted upon. 

On motion, the report of the committee on resolutions was 
unanimously adopted. 

The President : — With all the grace of its expression, the 
report is entirely unequal to what we desire to say but cannot find 
words to express. 

The sessions of this Conference, as arranged for the city of 
Richmond, are now at an end. To-morrow, at the University of 
Virginia, there will be another session. Those of us who have come 
here from a distance are filled with gratitude to the kindly Provi- 
dence which has brought us into such delightful acquaintance with 
the people of this city. With hearts full of thankfulness for this, 
I will ask you all to rise and receive the benediction. 

After the benediction, pronounced by Bishop W. N. McVickar, 
of Rhode Island, the Conference took a recess to meet at the Uni- 
versity of Virginia the next day, Saturday, April 25, 1903. 



SESSION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. 



Saturday, April 25, 1903. 

The Conference was called to order at 12 m., Dr. Paul B. Bar- 
ringer, chairman of the faculty of the University of Virginia in the 
chair. 

Dr. Barringer : — Fellow. Educators, Ladies and Gentlemen, 
I take this opportunity to welcome the educators gathered here to-day 
and extend the freedom of the University in the name of its faculty 
and board. 

This is the only state university in Ameiica which, for fifty 
years, existed without a complementary public school system. As you 
know, in 1776 Mr. Jefferson thought out, and presented a few years 
later to the state, a public school system which consisted of the 
common schools, high schools or academies, and the state university. 
He was unable to obtain the first part of the system, so he took 
what he could get, namely, the University of Virginia. And among 
the things he wished recorded, and now recorded, on his tomb, is the 
statement that he was " Father of the University of Virginia." 

You can see this left the University absolutely alone, as far as 
the public school system was concerned, for at least fifty years. Dur- 
ing that time it had to depend entirely upon the private schools. 
In 1870 to 1872 the public school system of this state was intro- 
duced, and within the last five years only have we been able to have 
any rural high schools to furnish students to the University, though 
a few city schools have contributed. Just now we are standing at 
the period of the merger of the old private school and the public 
school in contribution to the support of the University. 

I offer you again our congratulations upon your being here, 
and we will throw open the University to you. It is not necessary 
for me to introduce to the Conference the first speaker of this ses- 
sion, but to those of our friends who live here I will say that this is 
Mr. Robert C. Ogden, of New York, President of the Southern 
Education Board and of this Conference : — 

(231) 



>32 The Conference for Education. 



Response by Mr. Robert C. Ogden. 

Mr. Ogden : — Mr. Chairman of the Faculty, and Students of 
the University, It is my privilege to address you and not the com- 
pany of ladies and gentlemen who so beautifully decorate the rising 
seats of this rotunda. I speak for them to you, and very briefly. 

It is a serious task, especially to a man like myself just out of 
the work-a-day routine of life, to speak for such a gathering as this 
that I have the honor to represent. I am sure that I could confer no 
greater favor upon you than to go over the personality of this 
visiting company, but their modesty is so great that it would not be 
permissible or delicate for me to tell you what a remarkable and 
wonderful company they are. My function here is simply to return 
to the chairman and faculty and the whole body of the University 
our sincere and heartfelt thanks for the cordiality with which we 
have been welcomed here and for the privileges accorded us. I 
hardly know from what hands these blessings have been falling 
upon us. Of course, with the eye of faith, we trace them back to 
their original Divine source; but the channels through which they 
have come have been so graceful and so beautiful and the delicacy 
of the management has been so great that we have not been able to 
trace out the responsible individuals. Therefore I do not know 
whom to thank for the courtesy of the excursion here to-day, 
whether the Richmond Committee, or the Chesapeake & Ohio Rail- 
way, or the chairman and faculty of the University of Virginia. 
But then, you know, we should not be too critical about our bless- 
ings, and however they may come or through whatever hands they 
may pass, whatever loving hearts may contribute to the blessings 
that are ours, we are thankful to all concerned. We will carry away 
from here, as f rom -Richmond, new thoughts and impressions that 
I am sure will make us better men and women, better and more 
useful Americans. For we are a serious party, we enjoy the charms 
of social intercourse, we absorb the material and social blessings 
that come to us ; but we are not a frivolous crowd, we are an earnest 
lot, desiring to know more about this country of ours, whereby 
we may assist in bringing points of difference to points of agree- 
ment. Life is too full, we are too busy, there are too many things 
to be done, for good men and women in this age and this land to 
find any points of difference. There is a broad ground on which 



Robert C. Ogden. 233 

all patriotic, all Christian, all intelligent people can meet. We are 
finding that ground. We are only a few hundreds here to-day, and 
what are a few hundreds to the many millions of our country? 
But although we are a little company, not numerically great, we 
feel that shortly our numbers will greatly increase. And in thus 
rising to the point of absolute agreement as to things that pertain to 
the prosperity, peace and welfare of our country, we are growing 
richer, and we shall go away the better for it. (Applause.) 

In passing through the University grounds, I have had a little 
old thought come back to me with a great deal of force. This insti- 
tution, in a peculiar way, represents the best traditions of the past. 
We are here to-day observing the genius of a single man as applied 
to the problem of our civilization. Many of the great institutions 
of learning throughout this land have some personal association. 
This University of Virginia owes its creation to the genius of 
Thomas Jefferson. Harvard, Yale, Williams and many others trace 
back their origin to some individual mind, some great and liberal 
soul. 

All of these influences come rolling back upon us living in this 
present period, bringing to us the responsiblity of making a success 
of the past. Is Thomas Jefferson a success ? Are the founders and 
up-builders of our great institutions successes? We must answer 
that question. Am I a success? My children must answer that 
question. So being here, face to face with an influence so great, 
I am sure that one of the important lessons of the hour is our 
responsibility to the past, that the present may keep progressive 
and our inheritance may be better, brighter and greater because we 
have laid our hands on it. (Applause.) 

And then there is one other thing. It does not concern return- ' 
ing thanks to you, but it is of moment, and that is, we stand for 
popular education. We have heard, and shall hear, more about the 
relations of the higher institutions of learning to popular education, 
but it is not of that I wish to speak for a single moment. It is of 
this : the hope that comes to every thoughtful and intelligent citizen 
because of the present conditions of higher education. These insti- 
tutions, scattered up and down our land, are making men who can 
take up subjects abstractly, who can think them over in an atmos- 
phere separated from personal interests, from materialism and from 
commercialisrrt, who from that training can learn the value and 



234 ^^^ Conference for Education. 

importance of principles, and who, by that training, if earnest and 
conscientious men, will be fully enabled to solve our problems and 
bring their solutions into the practical affairs of life. (Applause.) 

The personal element is being recognized in many places. The 
men of affairs who a,re at the same time educators, men of thought 
who are touched with the things of the world, are coming rapidly 
to the front. We see in the fact that intellectual forces are coming 
down from the top the patency of the idea I am trying to express, 
that we are to look to such men in the further progress of our 
material affairs, already marvelous beyond comprehension. Who 
in this land twenty years ago dreamed that our national development 
would be what it is to-day ? Who in this land twenty years ago 
anticipated the problems that are now before our civilization ? They 
will become more complex with passing years, and our hope is 
that out of 'Such institutions as this men will come with clear per- 
ceptions and honest hearts who will bring with them that capacity 
to solve our problems which is absolutely necessary if this land is 
to be the land we hope it will be. (Applause.) 

Perhaps I have overstepped the line of delicacy in presenting 
these thoughts as the ideas of the people I am trying to represent, 
but they are my passing notions. I say again, we thank you. 
(Applause.) 

Dr. Barringer: — The University of Virginia has the honor 
of being represented on the State Board of Education, and we have 
with us to-day Professor Charles W. Kent, who will in that capacity 
address us on 

The Relation of the University to the Public Schools. 

Professor Charles W. Kent: — Mr. Chairman, Ladies and 
Gentlemen, It gives me very great pleasure, I assure you, to look 
into the faces of so many of those with whom, in the last few days, 
it has been my pleasure to associate, and to add a word of welcome 
to those already uttered by the chairman. This occasion, Mr. Presi- 
dent, serves to recall to me the first time I had the pleasure of know- 
ing you, when you, sir, representing the North afid I representing 
the South responded to an address of welcome delivered at Capon 
Springs, when our Conference was a small and seemingly unim- 
portant body. It delighted me in the last days particularly to note 
that in the discussions of this Conference we heard nothing of 



Charles W. Kent. 235 

North or South, but only splendid expressions of opinion with 
reference to the problems of education that face and confront every 
one of us. We have grown from the little conference at Capon 
Springs, where some special problems of Southern education were 
confronting us, to a great gathering busied with larger educational 
problems, which embrace not one race or color but the youth of this 
whole section. 

Reference has been made to the fact that Mr. Jefferson founded 
the University of Virginia. It ought also to be stated that he 
himself left as his written opinion that if there should be any choice 
between the education of the few in the university and the edu- 
cation of the many in the primary schools, the primary schools 
should be taken care of first, before the education of the few in 
the university; that it is of more consequence to the nation that all 
of the people should have some education than that some people 
should be altogether educated ; that it is indeed a matter of necessity 
to us in a democratic government, trusting as it does to the intelligent 
support of individual citizens, a matter of more vital consequence 
that all men should be educated in at least some fundamental prin- 
ciples than that a few should have the higher education. And I 
count it a peculiar honor to myself and to this institution that we 
now have the opportunity of co-operating with the public schools 
of Virginia. (Applause.) - 

It has been my privilege for several years to lecture before the 
School of Methods during the summer. There I have come in 
contact with nearly all of the school superintendents and workers 
in the public schools of Virginia; and, with all loyalty to the Uni- 
versity of Virginia, I say that I shall count my services, if they 
can be effectively rendered to the cause of popular education, of 
far more value there to the state of Virginia than anything I can 
do within these halls. (Applause.) During the coming years, if 
possible, I want to give much of my energy to that problem, because 
I am convinced that there are unsolved problems of education all 
through the South, and I am convinced that these problems some 
of us must solve in Virginia. It is time for all of us to get close 
together and work together in this grand movement. 

My heart thrilled as I listened in the last few days to the 
addresses at Richmond. I wish every man at the University of 
Virginia could have heard those addresses and have had his heart 



236 The Conference for Education. 

likewise thrilled with this new evangelism of the education of the 
masses. May every student here have borne in upon him sooner 
or later the sense of that responsibility of which the President has 
just spoken. We cannot escape it, we dare not shirk it. What- 
ever be our opinions about the education of the colored race, or 
of the result, one thing is certain, that we shall not go free if we 
do not do our very best to let in the light. For, as it was so splen- 
didly stated in Richmond, ignorance is a remedy for nothing, there- 
fore we must have knowledge. (Applause.) 

It gives me great pleasure to express my appreciation of the 
presence of so many of you gathered at the University of Virginia, 
the first-fruit of that scheme of Mr. Jefferson for common schools, 
high schools and a university. That foresight and that splendid 
power of his seem actually to have looked down the ages and seen 
what some of our problems were to be; and, as we discuss to-day 
the necessity of having all over the state primary schools in reach 
of all the people, the high school and the university, we go back 
to Mr. Jefferson's doctrine that there should be a public school 
within the reach of every child, and within the reach of those who 
wish higher training there should be a graded high school, and 
above that, in the reach of the few, there should be the university. 
Is it too optimistic to look forward to the time in Virginia when 
there will be a primary school in the reach of every child, white or 
colored, a graded school in every district, in every county a high 
school, and when every one of these shall contribute to the Uni- 
versity of Virginia? 

I cannot fail to say a word to the young men scattered over 
this audience. I trust that you, my young friends, will never come 
to that point of ignorance or arrogance where you will think that 
the education of children and the education of the masses is in any 
sense beneath your dignity, in any sense outside of your responsi- 
bility, in any sense outside of your sphere of life. While my life 
is spent in this university among books, I am convinced that a far 
more important thing than literature is life, and it is our business 
to contribute to the upbuilding, the ennobling and the enshrining, 
in its sacredness, of human life wherever found. 

Coming down the hills of Scotland one day, I saw in the distance 
a beautiful rainbow. Just as we seemed to pass under it the rain- 
bow vanished, but beyond it there opened a vista of surpassing 



Francis G. Peabody. 237 

loveliness. We stand under the rainbow of promise at the beginning 
of the century; and down the twentieth century behold a vista of 
life made noble, by such education, as will make us proud that we 
have had some share in the development of our beloved land. 
(Applause.) 

Dr. Barringer : — We have with us, I started to say, a gentle- 
man from Virginia, but he is from the Virginia of New England, 
Massachusetts. (Applause.) Moreover, he is the representative 
of the mother university of America. I have the pleasure of intro- 
ducing to this body Dr. Francis G. Peabody, of Harvard, who will 
speak a word to us. (Applause.) 

Address by Dr. Francis G. Peabody. 

Dr. Francis G. Peabody: — Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentle- 
men, The Reverend Dr. Twitchell, one of the best known Con- 
gregational ministers in New England, said one day that he could 
stand almost anything except temptation (Laughter) ; and I find 
myself over-tempted by the opportunity to say a few words about 
two things which draw me very near to the University of Virginia. 

About half a dozen years ago there died in Boston a gentle, 
secluded, maiden woman who had lived all her life with an unmar- 
ried brother in one of the suburbs of the city, hardly aware that 
they were accumulating wealth. The brother died leaving his 
fortune to her, and when the sister was about to die, she said to 
her nearest adviser that she had not the least idea what to do with 
her money. By her will, therefore, she bequeathed the greater part 
of her estate to a board of seven trustees, all total strangers to her, 
giving them absolute liberty as to the disposal of a considerable 
fortune. The situation, if I may use a less worthy illustration, was 
something like that of a distinguished citizen of Boston, who gave 
two tablets containing the Ten Commandments to be placed upon 
the wall of Flollis Street Church, remarking as he gave them : " I 
can't keep them, perhaps they can." (Laughter and applause.) 

This board of trustees had a free hand ; but they had plenty on 
their hands to do. One of the board remarked one day that they 
had better wait about a week until they received a few more appli- 
cations for assistance, and, as they had but $300,000, give the 
applicants one dollar apiece. It occurred, however, to the board of 
trustees, and especially to one among us, a typical Boston man, who 



238 The Conference for Education. 

bears upon his cheek the mark of a Southern sabre, and who in the 
war lost his nearest friends on Virginia soil, that no better thing 
could be done with a part of this money than to indicate by some 
gift that the end of the war had come, and that we were a united 
country in devotion to a common aim. (Applause.) The soil of 
Virginia was still wet, not only with the blood of your own heroes, 
but with the equally sacred blood of the best of Massachusetts men. 
Might we not, we asked ourselves, raise on Virginia soil a modest 
structure which should testify that behind the dissensions of the past 
there still continued to be a common devotion to the ideals of the 
scholar's life ? With that aim, a grant from our fund was con- 
tributed to the University of Virginia, and I have just had the 
pleasure of inspecting the building known as Randall Hall, which 
is the fulfillment of our dream. (Applause.) 

I may be permitted to say another word of greeting from my 
own university and from the universities and colleges of the North, 
which so many of us represent, to this, the primate of education 
in the Southern states. There are two great transitions in the 
history of education, in both of which Harvard University has been 
able to take a distinguished part. One is the expansion of the 
elective system of studies, the other is the establishment of the 
voluntary principle in the administration of religion. The expansion 
of the elective system in Harvard University is the secret of its 
marvelous growth. Perfect liberty to teach and to learn has brought 
to us devoted scholars and eager students, and the past thirty years 
has demonstrated to us the wisdom of academic liberty. 

But when we ask ourselves where this principle was first estab- 
lished, and whence it proceeded, we come to you. Fifty years before 
the University of Harvard offered even modest recognition to the 
principle of election, it was recognized as the only method appro- 
priate to the higher learning, by the genius and foresight of Mr.- 
Jefferson. Harvard University and the University of Virginia pre- 
sent many contrasts. We have grown by degrees through the offer- 
ings of plain Puritans who established a school for the Puritan min- 
istry. This university sprang full-grown from the mind of a single 
man. Yet in a common devotion to liberty, to the democratic prin- 
ciple of education, we are one, and should we of Harvard write any 
motto upon our walls, it would be the same text that stands upon 
this building : " Ye shall ' know the truth, and the truth shall make 



Francis G. Peahody. 239 

you free." With great gratitude, then, a representative of Harvard 
University offers his congratulations and appreciation to the Univer- 
sity of Virginia. 

The second transition to which I referred is the appHcation of 
Hberty to . the administration of religion. In almost every college 
and university in this land there have seemed to be but two possible 
alternatives concerning religion — on the one hand, its abolition, as 
inconsistent with academic liberty, and on the other hand, its com- 
pulsion, as a part of academic discipline. The latter was the alterna- 
tive accepted at Harvard University for more than two centuries. 
Religion was a part of college discipline; attendance upon worship 
counted in the grading of rank ; absence from worship was a breach 
of college order. So we. lived, until in 1886 the compulsion of 
circumstances overcame the compulsion of dogma, and to freedom 
in election of studies was added freedom in religion. Religion 
became no longer a matter of discipline, but a matter of privilege ; 
the supreme privilege of educated men, and in that high faith our 
academic life now proceeds. But what an evidence it is of the 
provincialism of Massachusetts, that very few among us were aware 
that through the long period from 1826 to 1886 the principle of 
liberty in religion had actually prevailed, and prevailed with success, 
in the University of Virginia! Here, for all of those years, with- 
out ostentation or self-advertisement, you had assumed the religious 
life to be a thing of privilege; and I congratulate you on this undis- 
puted primacy, in leading the way in the faith that religion need ask 
no favors, but only a fair chance among the competing influences 
of human life, and that freedom in religion brings forth as its 
natural fruits, integrity, righteousness, fidelity and faith. (Applause.) 

Shall we not clasp hands, then, in this fraternity of scholars — 
you, who represent the sound learning of the South, and we who 
represent the colleges of the North? As one looks forward into 
the new time, he perceives that the gravest issue which confronts us 
all is not between North and South, or between white and black, or 
between rich and poor. The fundamental issue, which threatens 
the very pillars of our civilization, is the issue between commercial- 
ism on the one hand and idealism on the other, the issue between 
the vulgarity and ostentation of the modern world and the tran-^ 
quillity, self-respect, freedom from materialism and ideal aims of the 
true scholar's Hfe. (Applause.) 



240 The Conference for Education. 

A university, looked at externally, is a thing of buildings, of 
libraries and laboratories and lecture halls and endowments and 
apparatus. But none of these things make a university. A uni- 
versity justifies itself in the present age just so far as it is a home of 
idealism ; and, if it be not that, then, as one of the most distinguished 
of American scholars once said, it were better that its walls should 
crumble in a night. In the fraternity of this faith in sound learning, 
in devotion to high thinking and plain living, we clasp hands across 
what was once a chasm of war but is now a bridge of peace. 

On the Fourth of July, 1826, John Adams, a son of Harvard 
and the father of a whole line of sons of Harvard, lay dying in 
Massachusetts, and it is said that his last words were : " Thomas 
Jefferson still survives" ; yet on that very day, Thomas Jefferson, 
by one of the strangest coincidences in history, on the anniversary 
of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson 
lay dying here. We of Massachusetts, as we survey the work you 
are doing here, repeat the words of John Adams, of Massachusetts, 
Thomas Jefferson still survives ; the spirit of democracy he taught 
flourishes and expands among you still; and we bring you our 
fraternal greetings and our respectful congratulations in a common 
loyalty to the ideals of the scholar's life. (Applause.) 

Dr. Barringer: — Those of us who have lived within the 
shadow of Monticello know Jefferson chiefly as an educator. I 
have no doubt there are many of you to-day who begin to look on 
him in a new light since seeing the university he built, and you 
begin to forget he was a foreign minister, Vice-President, Presi- 
dent, and many other things that came to him through politics. 
Very few people outside of those directly connected with educa- 
tion have ever given a thought to him as an educator. Professor 
Heath Dabney, of the University of Virginia, will now speak a few 
words to you on the subject of Thomas Jefferson from the stand- 
point of an educator. 

Thomas Jefferson as an Educator. 

Dr. R. Heath Dabney: — Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentle- 
men, But for the fact that it might seem to be shirking on my part, 
I think I should have to decline to speak upon this subject, for, to 
tell the truth, the gentlemen who have preceded me have said all 
that I have to say, and I am certain that they have said it much 



R. Heath Dabney. 241 

better than I can do. Yet perhaps I may at least read a word or 
two from what Mr. Jefferson himself said. In a letter written in 
the year 1818 to Joseph C. Cabell, he said this : " A system of gen- 
eral instruction which shall reach every description of our citizens, 
from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so it will be 
the latest of the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to 
take an interest." 

Note well the words — " the earliest" and " the latest." 
This man, then, who was governor of Virginia, who was min- 
ister to France, who was secretary of state, who was Vice-President, 
and twice President of the United States ; this man who was the 
founder of a great party and the purchaser of a vast territory ; 
this man who took a deep interest and played a leading part in so 
many public concerns ; this man who was pre-eminently a man of 
affairs ; this practical man ; this man says that the first and the last, 
the earliest and the latest, the alpha and the omega, of his thoughts 
was that very thing for which this Conference has assembled — 
education. (Applause.) 

It was Jefferson's wish to establish, in harmonious co-operation 
and in organic union, a system of educational institutions which 
should consist of, first, primary schools based upon local taxation; 
second, a system of high schools, academies and local colleges, and, 
third, a state university, as roof and spire to the whole educational 
edifice. He did not live to see the realization of the whole of this 
splendid scheme; for he was far in advance of his times. The 
world had not caught up with his ideas ; and I do not believe that 
even the twentieth century has yet caught up with them. But he 
did live, after a long struggle against much opposition and after 
long study of many educational institutions, to become the " Father 
of the University of Virginia." For if ever there was an institution 
which was what Emerson called " the lengthened shadow of one 
man," it is this institution. This university is still instinct with 
the spirit which Jefferson breathed into it at its birth ; the same spirit 
that he breathed into everything he touched, whether politics, society, 
education, or religion, — the spirit of freedom. " I have sworn," 
said he, " I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility to 
every form of tyranny over the mind of man." In the Declaration 
of Independence he expressed hostility to political tyranny ; in the 
statute for religious freedom in Virginia he expressed hostility to 
16 



242 The Conference for Education. 

religious tyranny ; in the statute for the abohtion of primogeniture 
and entail he expressed hostility to social tyranny ; and in the 
establishment of the University of Virginia he expressed hostility 
to the tyranny of ignorance. 

Free government, free faith, free land, free thought! Free- 
dom was the keynote to all the harmony to which Jefferson's soul 
was attuned. No matter what song he sang, it was always written 
in that key. 

As you have been told, the older among these buildings were 
planned by him. Their materials were simple and plain. For the 
university then, like the university now, was sorely cramped for 
means. But that group of buildings is stamped with the impress 
of an immortal mind; and there is one of them in particular to 
which I would call your special attention. We call it the Rotunda — 
our library building. That building, in my opinion, is pre-eminently 
the emblem of the man who drew its plans, and of the institution 
which he founded. I do not believe it was an accident that this 
building was modeled after the Roman Pantheon, the temple of 
all the gods and all the creeds and all the systems of thought; the 
temple of freedom ; the temple of individual responsibility ; the 
temple of independent manhood. Jefferson was pre-eminently an 
individualist — a man who refused to bow his neck to any yoke of 
dogma, whether political, social, educational, or ecclesiastical. 

It would be rash indeed to assert that the University of Vir- 
ginia has attained his ideals, or has always been wholly true to his 
principles. Yet it has endeavored to conform to them on the whole. 
It has maintained what has been justly called the freedom of learn- 
ing, the freedom of the student to elect those studies which he 
prefers ; and it has maintained the glorious freedom of teaching, 
the freedom of the teacher to teach his own doctrines in his own 
way without dictation from any source whatever. (Applause.) 

Moreover, Jefferson's university upholds not merely intellectual, 
but also moral and religious freedom. No student is compelled to 
attend chapel or church against his will; yet many students con- 
tribute voluntarily to the support of religious exercises conducted 
by ministers of many creeds. Jefferson did not believe in force; 
he preferred to point out the. light and leave men free to follow it. 
" It may well be questioned," said he, " whether fear, after a certain 
age, is a motive to which we should have ordinary recourse. The 



R. Heath Dahney. 243 

human character is susceptible of other incitements to correct con- 
duct more worthy of employ, and of better effect." And again: 
" A police exercised by the students themselves, under proper dis- 
cretion, has been tried with success in some countries, and the 
rather as forming them for initiation into the duties and practice of 
civil life." These views of Jefferson's bore fruit in that honor sys- 
tem which is the chief pride and glory of this university. Jefferson 
had faith in the nobler side of human nature. Therefore, he trusted 
men. His university has faith in the nobler side of student nature. 
Therefore, she trusts her students. Her professors are free from 
the odium inseparably attached to spies. Her students are free 
from the insult of being watched, either in the examination room 
or anywhere else. So rigid is her standard of graduation that only 
a small minority of her students can ever hope to obtain the coveted 
degrees. Yet few, indeed, among them would not scorn to obtain a 
degree by the despicable methods of the cheat. 

But, it may be asked : "Is not freedom in some matters too 
strong a meat for poor digestions ?" It may be so. In some cases 
it doubtless is so. But Jefferson's university cannot destroy the 
tonic freedom of the many in order to coddle the few with stomachs 
too weak for freedom. If an unwise father sends an unformed, 
weakling son to this place, he does so at his peril. The callow 
youth who thinks it manly to get drunk, heroic to gamble and 
sublime to be a rake, ought to be at a kindergarten and not at a 
university. (Applause.) This is no place for babes and sucklings; 
Jefferson's university is a place where manly men may become more 
manly. She will be true to the lofty principle of freedom instilled 
by her founder; and, remembering that freedom begets knowledge, 
while knowledge begets freedom, she will cling steadfastly to that 
motto to which Dr. Peabody has alluded — that motto deeply graven 
upon the front of this building, and still more deeply graven, let us 
hope, upon the hearts of her students, her professors and her alumni : 
" Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." 
(Applause.) 

Dr. Barringer: — We have here an alumnus of the University 
of Virginia, who is also a member of the Southern Education Board. 
It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Charles W. 
Dabney, president of the University of Tennessee. 



244 The Conference for Education. 



Address by Dr. Charles W. Dabney. 

Dr. Charles W. Dabney : — Ladies and Gentlemen, and Mem- 
bers of the ConferencCj Perhaps I should first explain to my fellow- 
members of the Conference that whenever and wherever a number 
of alumni of the University of Virginia or, for that matter, Vir- 
ginians of any kind come together, they are very sure, before they 
get through, to hold a Thomas Jefferson memorial celebration. It is 
positively inevitable. In accordance with this custom the present 
meeting, as you perceive, has already resolved itself into such a 
celebration, and even the members of this Conference from other 
states have caught the Virginia spirit. 

Thomas Jefferson was, I believe, the greatest seer and prophet 
the New World ever produced. But he was more than a far-seeing 
eye ; he was a great constructive genius : he was more than a 
prophet; he was a great builder. Three of Thomas Jefferson's 
most splendid visions have already become definite realities, as we 
can see to-day. He beheld a vision of a free people, made up of 
independent states, that should finally cover this entire western 
continent from sea to sea ; he wrote their Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, established their relations with the other nations of the 
earth, became their Chief Executive, explored the country destined 
for their future and himself annexed a large portion of it. And, 
behold now a nation of seventy-six million souls living peacefully 
and working earnestly throughout the continental empire which 
he practically secured for them by that act of a hundred years ago. 
(Applause.) He found a little, struggling state, cramped in the 
shackles of the feudal system; he struck off its bonds, and to-day 
we see the great and prosperous commonwealth of Virginia, mother 
of soldiers and statesmen in the past, of scholars and teachers in the 
present. (Applause.) From the heights of Monticello he looked 
across this beautiful valley, and saw in his vision these hills crowned 
by the domes and towers and the colonnades of a great American 
university; and, behold, to-day this splendid temple of science. 

Yes, truly he was seer and prophet, architect and builder, — the 
roundest and fullest man our country has ever produced. Like 
Moses, he alone saw the vision, he alone received the command to 
build, he alone took all the measures and laid all the plans, he 



Charles W. Dahney. 245 

alone gave the orders, and he alone built this great tabernacle for 
his people in the wilderness of a new land. 

Human institutions are generally the product of the individual 
forces which one man, or set of men, after long and painful effort, 
have brought into effective combination at some auspicious time. 
But this institution sprang full-grown and full-armed from the 
head of this our Jove. He called himself its father ; and its father 
indeed he was in a most unusual sense, for he conceived it, planned 
it, and fashioned it both as to form and as to spirit according to 
his plan. We have looked to-day upon the beautiful rotunda and 
these classical pavilions, the works of his hand ; but more wonder- 
ful than these material products of his genius were the new prin- 
ciples in education which he here first introduced. The chiefest of 
these were freedom of teaching for professors and freedom of learn- 
ing for students. Again and again he wrote : " This institution will 
be based upon the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For 
here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to 
tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." Free- 
dom to investigate and freedom to study, liberty for professors and 
students alike, with the system of elective studies — these principles, 
as Dr. Peabody has said, were established here by Jefferson fifty 
years before Harvard herself adopted them. Freedom to live was 
another Jeffersonian theory; government of the students by the 
students and for the students, within the law and yet with no other 
laws except those which everywhere govern gentlemen, was here 
first introduced into American colleges. The honor system which 
resulted from this, has been the chief glory of the student body. 
These principles, embodied in this university in the beginning by its 
father, and by its sons now disseminated largely throughout our 
country, are an even nobler monument to Thomas Jefferson than 
are these classic halls and yon beautiful rotunda. 

One other vision had Thomas Jefferson for his beloved people 
of Virginia. He saw a completely correlated system of schools, — 
a school for each " hundred" and a grammar school for each county, 
— leading up to this great university, as section by section the cap- 
stone of the pyramid is reached ; and, behold ! after a hundred years, 
that vision also is about to be realized. We, alumni and friends of 
education, are especially rejoiced to-day to hear that this university, 
through its representative upon the State Board of Education, is 



246 The Conference for Education. 

henceforth to take an active part in upbuilding the pubhc schools of 
Virginia. By this act, gentlemen, you will attain the grandest 
vision and fulfill the dearest hope of Jefferson in perfecting a sys- 
tem of free schools for all the people, complete from the lowest 
foundation to the university capstone. (Applause.) 

Properly, therefore, do Virginians reverence the principles and 
almost worship the memory of Thomas Jefferson. Wisely do we 
strive to embody them in our institutions and to carry them out in 
our lives. And yet, dear fellow alumni, I think we should ask our- 
selves this serious question : Are we not in danger of making the 
teachings of Thomas Jefferson a fetich, of striving to embody their 
form rather than their essence? It is not enough to worship in 
the material temple, we must carry the principles of truth into our 
very hearts. Institutions like this were never designed to be un- 
changeable mausoleums to the glorious dead, like the pyramids of 
the Pharaohs; they are living, growing organisms for the training 
of living, growing men. This university was not built merely to 
the honor of a single departed man, but for the benefit of all gen- 
erations, present and future. 

One gentleman has quoted the beautiful epigram of Emerson : 
" An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man." And he 
has well said that this was never more truly said of any man than 
it may be said of Jefferson to-day. The ever-lengthening shadow 
of that colossal figure standing on yonder height to the east, watch- 
ing the upbuilding of this institution, watching the growth of his 
beloved state, watching the expansion and development of this 
nation, enwraps us completely, across the valley of fourscore years, 
in the folds of its inspiring influence. The poet may call this influ- 
ence the shadow of a soul departed, but to us to-day it is a brilliant 
light, calling us to still nobler strivings and still more glorious vic- 
tories. Thomas Jefferson, indeed, lives to-day, but not as a shadow. 
He lives for us in this grand nation, in, this noble commonwealth, 
and especially in this great institution, which, like a great beacon, 
with many revolving lenses, throws the life-saving light around 
the whole circle of the stormy sea. (Applause.) 

Like a great city on a hill, to be the advancing and growing 
light of the world, this institution must be constantly rebuilt and 
extended. It must be manned and equipped, provisioned and sup- 
plied; and all the lights on all its towers must be fed and tended, 



Charles W. Dabney. 247 

night by night, that it may forever enhghten our country. Let us 
remember then, brother alumni, that this, our mother university, is 
not merely a monument to its founder, it is not merely a storehouse 
of knowledge, or a place for teaching a few hundred youths each 
year, but a living and growing institution for the service of all the 
people, not only of this commonwealth, but also of the whole United 
States ; and that it is our filial duty to extend her walls and build 
up her towers, and keep her always manned and supplied, so that 
through all the ages her light may shine afar. (Applause.) 



On motion, the Conference then adjourned, subject to the call 
of the executive committee. 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



A Report of the Addresses in Commemoration of the Life and 
Public Services of J. L. M. Curry, D.C.L., LL.D., Super- 
vising Director of the Southern Education Board, Mem- 
ber of the General Education Board, Agent of the 
Peabody and Slater Boards. 



On the evening of Sunday, the twenty-sixth of April, there 
was held in the Academy of Music, at Richmond, Va., a service of 
commemoration in recognition of the life and public activities of the 
late J. L. M. Curry. Mr. Robert C. Ogden presided. The meeting 
was opened with prayer by the Rev. George Cooper, D.D., of Rich- 
mond. After a few introductory words by the presiding officer, the 
following address was delivered by F. W. Boatwright, Ph.D., presi- 
dent of Richmond College. 

Address by Dr. F. W. Boatwright. 

Dr. Boatwright: — Mr. Anthony Froude, in his biography of 
Lord Beaconsfield, says one may test a man's claim to greatness by 
observing : ( i ) Whether he left behind anything of permanent value 
to humanity; and (2) whether he always forgot himself in his 
work. By this test the English earl is condemned. By the same 
standard we may claim high place for our cherished leader whose 
life we contemplate this evening. 

Many in this audience have seen his kingly form, and have 
heard his thrilling eloquence. During the days when Richmond was 
the capital of the Confederacy, and then for thirteen years while 
he was professor in Richmond College, Dr. Curry was a resident 
of this city, closely linked with our social, educational and religious 
life. 

(251) 



252 The Conference for Education. 

Any survey of his life, however brief, must note that he enjoyed 
great advantages of birth and education. Born and reared in the 
heart of the South, he finished his education in the heart of New 
England, amid the noblest Puritan traditions. Thus, at the begin- 
ning of his career, he had learned to understand and appreciate both 
sections. He entered public life and, by his championship of cher- 
ished convictions, was soon brought into great prominence. The 
entire country heard him with attention, for, with his high self- 
respect and innate sense of honor, he respected the convictions of 
his opponents. Thus, we find Horace Greeley giving him space and 
attention in the stormiest period of Congressional legislation. In 
our great national tragedy, he had often to approach the center of 
the stage. After the civil strife was over, he still sought to serve 
his country, and became a teacher. As was to be expected from 
his scholorship, his skill in the art of expression, and his love of 
young men, success was immediate and brilliant. One is reminded 
of the way his illustrious friend. General Lee, drew men to him at 
Washington College. His teaching was inspirational. The force 
of his personality was like a magnet, which attracted his students 
and electrified them to new hopes and loftier aspirations. Later, 
he became educational administrator and leader, diplomat and 
author. His name went round the world. 

Returning to Froude's first test of greatness, I think we shall 
all agree that Dr. Curry's ministry of Southern education, as gen- 
eral agent of the Peabody Fund, constitutes his chief contribution 
to human progress. This accords with our friend's own view of 
his life. Again and again he declared in his public addresses : " My 
life is a ministry of public education." In its editorial notice of his 
death, the Springfield Republican well calls him the father of the 
modern educational movement in the Southern States. 

In order to apprehend the vastness of his labors, one must 
study the Southern educational situation in the year 188 1, when he 
began his Peabody agency. The war between the states had swept 
away the South's excellent private schools of primary and secondary 
grade, and at the same time all hope of adequately re-establishing 
them. Dr. Sears, the distinguished first agent of the Peabody Fund, 
had planned a system of public free schools, and through the 
resources at his command was winning success in the promotion 
of free elementary education of white and black children. The 



In Memory of J. L. M. Curry. 253 

Peabody Normal at Nashville had opened its doors, but Dr. Sears 
found the Tennessee legislature obdurate in the matter of appropria- 
tions. Similar difficulties faced this great and good man in other 
quarters. It is amazing how much he accomplished. But, when 
Dr. Sears passed away, the South felt, and the eminent members 
of the Peabody Board had the discernment to see, that in those try- 
ing times their work of education and reconciliation in the sensitive 
South required a man who had himself come up through the great 
tribulation, and had, nevertheless, retained the confidence of all 
sections. They found this man teaching English and philosophy in 
Richmond College. Upon the nomination of President Grant, sec- 
onded by President Hayes, Dr. Curry was elected general agent of 
the Peabody Board. His first endeavor was to establish and equip 
normal schools for the training of teachers. In 1889 he could 
point to normal schools in nearly every Southern state, the found- 
ing of all of them due to the stimulus and suggestion of this board. 
If any one doubts the magnitude of the difficulties encountered, or 
the heroic ardor of the Peabody agent, let him read Dr. Curry's 
letter to Hon. Fleming DuBignon, president of the Senate of 
Georgia. No man ever pleaded more eloquently for the common 
people or for the brother in black. A little later we find him address- 
ing a letter to the two gubernatorial candidates in Alabama, beseech- 
ing them to make common cause for the education of the children 
of the state. Who else but Dr. Curry would have been heard amid 
the noise and din of political strife? He was again and again 
invited to address Southern legislatures, and everywhere he advo- 
cated the best education for both races. I can find no other man 
in history who ever addressed so many legislative assemblies. As 
I have reviewed these impassioned appeals to the spirit of noblesse 
oblige, I have been impressed with their modernity. His pleas for 
industrial training, for better teachers, for improved schoolhouses, 
for the teaching of civics, for instruction in agriculture in rural 
schools, for a local tax for education, might well have been made 
from this platform this week. He was a leader in whom, as John 
Stuart Mill said of Gladstone, the spirit of improvement was incar- 
nate. Throughout the South he aroused the public conscience to the 
absolute necessity of educating the masses. He often quoted the 
words of Jules Simon : " The nation that has the best schools will 
be the first nation. If it is not so to-day, it will be to-morrow." 



254 ^^^ Conference for Education. 

In the dawning of this to-morrow he passed away. Let us never 
forget that much of his work was Hke that of other pioneers on new 
fields. It is and will remain unseen. He labored, and we have 
entered into his labors. Thus I often think of grand old Lessing 
in his relation to modern German literature. He cleared the ground, 
laid the foundation, and gave plans, but Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel 
and Heine shine as towers and minarets of the growing temple. 
Honor to the stones that can support such glory ! 

Dr. Curry's service was national service. No one with love 
of the republic in his heart and just conceptions of patriotism in 
his head can regard his service to Southern schools as sectional 
service. He was not more truly in the service of the whole nation 
as Minister to Spain, than when, as agent of the Peabody Fund, he 
was pleading with Southern legislatures for the schools of the people. 
Illiteracy and ignorance are not merely local dangers. The schools 
of the South are American schools. So thought Robert C. Win- 
throp and J. L. M. Curry, and this Conference says. Amen. Thus 
we display our Christian patriotism which wills the " wholesome 
soundness of the nation's inner life." Thus he cemented the union 
of states, and restored fellowship and fraternity. 

May I pause to mention that, with his growing fame and widen- 
ing influence, Dr. Curry's devotion to this city and to the College 
within its gates never weakened? Daniel Webster's tenderness for 
Dartmouth is proverbial. So felt Dr. Curry towards Richmond 
College, over whose trustees he presided until 1897. His wife's 
father had been the chief contributor to the endowment of the 
College, and he, himself, was a constant benefactor. His cherished 
ambition for the institution was to see there a school of technology, 
for which he planned through thirty years. Upon the College he 
put imperishable honor by requesting that his body should be borne 
to rest from its halls. 

Even the casual reviewer of Dr. Curry's life must appreciate 
that he was a man of enthusiasms. This was apparent in Congress, 
in board meetings, on the platform, and even in ordinary conversa- 
tions. In 1873 his zeal for the wider diffusion of education in Vir- 
ginia led him to visit the churches and courthouses of Tidewater, 
and after the manner of the political campaigner to make a series 
of addresses before open air mass-meetings on the advantages of 
education. Often he swayed these multitudes as a storm sweeps 



In Memory of J. L. M. Curry. 255 

the forest. His ardent enthusiasm is also evident in his campaign 
against Mahonism in this state. Everywhere this zeal characterizes 
him. He cannot be otherwise than ardent. Earnestness inspired his 
thought and his activity. He loved the causes he espoused, and 
threw into them the whole force of his ponderous personality. When 
he spoke on religious liberty, whether in New York before an 
ecumenical council or in Virginia before a district association, 
he set his massive frame on fire, and kindled a conflagration of 
emotion among his hearers. One thinks of Peter the Hermit, when 
one reads Dr. Curry's speeches on education. He is a marvel of 
moral enthusiasm. And as this ardor flashes from the printed 
page, we can only say to our sons and daughters, as did ^Eschines 
to his pupils after reading to them an oration of Demosthenes : 
" You should have heard the Hon himself." 

The mediatorial agency of Dr. Curry impresses me profoundly. 
In the ante-bellum Congress, he had the ear of the whole nation. 
After his embassy to Spain, he again got a national hearing. He 
had bided his time, and now he began to write books. Now was his 
opportunity to reconstruct ideas and opinions adverse to the South. 
The nation had unquestioning, unstinting confidence in his sincerity 
and integrity, and he received gratifying assurances that all sec- 
tions barkened to his words. No Southern writer has spoken more 
plainly or more unreservedly, but none has been more careful to 
base his assertions upon indisputable facts. He is everywhere broad- 
minded, and he sets his face towards the future. 

My distinguished colleague. Professor S. C. Mitchell, has 
recently pointed out that the tendencies of the nineteenth century 
were towards liberty of thought, nationalism in politics, and indus- 
trialism in production and education. One perceives at once that 
Dr. Curry was the exponent of what we now discover was best in 
recent decades. Because he identified the nation with all the people 
he believed heartily in this Conference, which stands for the uplift 
of all. The most pathetic note in his expiring voice was his yearn- 
ing to be with you in the great work to which he had unselfishly 
given his life. 

In an address delivered before the veterans of the Confederacy, 
assembled in this city July i, 1896, I find Dr. Curry's own summing 
up of his life purposes. He declares : " Individually, as a Southern 
man and Confederate soldier, I have felt that my highest duty to 



256 The Conference for Education. 

my section since the struggle ended, was to restore fraternity of 
spirit as well as political association. This duty to the South and 
to the Union was best discharged by laboring for free, universal 
education (for the free school is the corner-stone of any New 
South), by devotion to the best interests of the whole country, by 
demonstrating that the interests of every state and the honor of 
the flag, are as safe in the hands of a Confederate as of a Union 
soldier, and by a steady advocacy of national issues, great and 
broad enough to efface sectionalism." Here is your true American. 
Dr. Curry was fond of relating the story of Lieutenant Raw- 
son's experience at the terrible battle of Tel-el-Kebir. In the gloom 
of night on the Egyptian desert. Lieutenant Rawson had to guide 
the English Army against the enemy. Fixing his eyes upon the 
stars, the faithful guide brought the army at break of day to the 
hostile camp. The attack was made and a brilliant victory won. 
But among the dying lay Lieutenant Rawson, the unfaltering guide. 
Soon the commander-in-chief was by his rude couch, anxious to 
hear his last requests. But his voice, though weak, rang with 
triumph. "General, didn't I lead them straight? Didn't I lead 
them straight?" Well may our fallen leader say, "Didn't I, in 
days of distress and difficulty, lead my country straight?" 

Following Dr. Boatwright's address the audience rose and united 
in the singing of the following hymn, especially composed for the 
occasion by Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, of New York City, editor 
of the Century Magasine: 

A HYMN. 
L 

God of the strong, God of the weak, 

Lord of all lands, and our own land ; 
Light of all souls, from Thee we seek 

Light from Thy light, strength from Thy hand. 

II. 

In suffering Thou hast made us one, 

In mighty burdens one are we ; 
Teach us that lowliest duty done 

Is highest service unto Thee. 



In Memory of J. L. M. Curry. 257 

III. 
Teach us, Great Teacher of mankind, 

The sacrifice that brings Thy balm ; 
The love, the work that bless and bind; 

Teach us Thy majesty, Thy calm. 

IV. 

Teach Thou, and we shall know, indeed, 

The truth divine that maketh free. 
And knowing, we may sow the seed 

That blossoms through Eternity. 

V. 

May sow in every living heart 

That to the waiting day doth ope. 
Not ours, O God ! the craven part. 

To shut one human soul from hope. 

VI. 
Now, in the memory of Thy Saint, 

To whom Thy little ones were dear. 
Help us to toil and not to faint. 

Till earth grows dark and heaven comes near. 

Amen. 

Upon the conclusion of the hymn, the following address was 
delivered by Edwin Anderson Alderman, LL.D., president of Tulane 
University, New Orleans, La. : 

Address by Dr. Edwin A. Alderman. 

Dr. Alderman : — It is altogether proper and beautiful that this 
great Conference, after a session of singular interest and meaning, 
should come together, in its closing hours, to do honor to the memory 
of a man who helped to form and direct its history, and who stood 
for its highest ideals; and likewise to gain, from a study of his 
purposeful life, fresh strength and will for the work that lies before 
us, and will lie before those who are to come after us. Jabez Lamar 
Monroe Curry, who passed out of this life on February 12, 1903, 
lived a long, full, varied life of service, of devotion, of struggle and 
17 



258 The Conference for Education. 

achievement. We mourn, therefore, no young Lycidas, dead ere his 
prime, but we come, rather, to take to heart the lesson of the Ufe 
of a splendid Ulysses, who had never known rest from travel and 
work, who had drunk honorable life to its lees, and whose spirit at 
the last still yearned in desire " to strive, to seek, to find, and not to 
yield." J. L. M. Curry had been a soldier in two wars, a maker of 
laws in a state and nation, a preacher, a writer of useful books, 
twice a representative of his. government at the court of Spain, 
and a statesman of that truest sort whose faith in the perfectibility 
of men was unfailing and whose ambition was to give to all men a 
chance to inherit the beauty, the richness and the power of life. 

Dr. Curry was born in Lincoln County, Georgia, on June 5, 
1825. During his early childhood, his father, a wealthy planter, 
emigrated from Georgia to Alabama and settled about six miles 
from Talladega in that state. His academic training was received at 
the University of Georgia and his legal education at Harvard Col- 
lege, from which he was graduated in 1846 at the age of twenty-one. 
In 1847, ^^ was elected to the Legislature of Alabama from Talla- 
dega County and began his great career as a public servant. For 
twenty years he served the State of Alabama with singular ability 
and distinction, as legislator, congressman, soldier and teacher, 
and though his later life was passed elsewhere, and his services 
belonged to the nation, his heart and mind constantly reverted with 
tender loyalty to that great state, as the land of his young manhood 
and his home. 

The intense, rich life of our leader and friend covered an equally 
intense and rich period of his country's history. His thoughtful 
boyhood looked out upon a crude, healthy, boastful nation, drunk 
with a kind of democratic passion, and getting used, in rough ways, 
to the shrewd air of popular government, and yet clinging to the 
concept of orderly nationality. His young manhood was passed in 
the isolated lower South, amid the storm of a great argument, as to 
the nature of this Union, made necessary by the silence and inde- 
cision of" the Constitution. To our minds, cleared of the hot temper 
of the time, that age seems an unhappy, contentious, groping age; 
but I believe that it was a good age in which to be born, for men 
were in earnest about deep, vital things. It was indeed an age of 
passion, but of passion based on principles, and enthusiasms, and 
deep loyalties. The cynic, the political idler, the self-seeker, fled 



In Memory of J. L. M. Curry. 259 

before these fiery-eyed men who were probing into metaphysical, 
governmental theories and constitutional interpretations, and who 
counted their ideas as of more value than their lives. The time had 
its obvious faults, and was doomed to fall before the avatar of 
progress ; but there lived in it beauty and force and a great central 
note of exaltation of personality above social progress. To this 
was due the romantic beauty of many of the personalities of this 
period and section, and also the industrial inefficiency of the total 
mass. Around the fireside, in that frontier world of his, the talk 
did not fall so much upon the kind of man who forms the syndicate 
or corners the stock market or who wages the warfare of trade 
around the world, but rather upon simple, old questions which 
might have been asked in the Homeric age : Is he free from sbrdid- 
ness or stain? Has he borne himself bravely in battle? Has he 
suffered somewhere with courage and dignity? Has he kept faith 
with ideals? 

The best and most lasting bequest of the time to the whole 
nation was the conception of politics as a lofty profession, to be 
entered upon by the best men for unselfish purposes. The old 
South sent her greatest, truest men to represent her in national 
councils. The new South has sent unpurchasable men at least. I 
believe that the whole nation has been taught a lesson by this custom 
which will prove an unceasing good in this great democratic experi- 
ment of ours. Dr. Curry had reached his prime when the great 
drama, fate determined and fate driven, passed from argument into 
war, and he, himself, caught in the grip of that same fate, with all 
his gentleness and tenderness, became of those whose " faith and 
truth on war's red touchstone rang true metal." In the strength 
of middle life and in the serene wisdom of old age, this fortunate 
man found himself living in another world, and with sufficient 
strength of heart, which is courage, to live in it and of it and for it 
with a spirit unspoiled by hate or bitter memories, with a heart 
unfretted by regrets and with a purpose unshaken by any doubt. A 
great soul is needed to pass from one era to another in such fashion 
as this. The strand of every revolutionary epoch is lined with the 
wrecks of pure and lovable men who had not the faith and courage 
to will to live and serve another time. Dr. Curry possessed this 
quality of courage in high degree. Indeed, for the first time he 
had sight of the possibility of an undivided country, rid of sectional- 



26o The Conference for Education. 

ism and provincialism and hindering custom and tradition, conscious 
of its destiny, assured of its nationality, striving to fit itself for the 
work of a great nation in civilization. He had sight, too, of his 
own section, idealized, to him, by fortitude and woe, adjusting itself 
in dignity and suffering and power to the spirit of the modern 
world. What is there for a strong man to do? — we may fancy 
himself asking himself in the silence of his soul. There could be 
no bickerings for such men as he, no using of his great powers to 
find place for himself by nursing the feeling of hatred and revenge 
in the breasts of proud and passionate races. There could be no 
crude, racial scorn, no theatrical pettiness, no vain, fatuous blindness, 
or puerile obstinacy. " Not painlessly had God remoulded and cast 
anew the nation." The pain had indeed smitten his soul, but his 
eyes were clear enough to see God's great hand in the movements of 
society and to realize the glory of new-birth out of pain, and his 
desire was aflame to be about the work that re-creates and sets in 
order. Like all sincere, unselfish men to whom life means helpful- 
ness, he saw his task lying before him — like a sunlit road stretching 
straight before the traveler's feet. He was to walk in that path 
for all his remaining days. The quality of his mind, the sum of his 
gifts and graces, the ideals of contemporary civilization suggested 
political preferment, but no consideration of self or fortune could 
swerve him from his course. There dwelt in him a leonine quality 
of combat and struggle, a delight of contest, a rising of all his 
powers to opposition that had only one master in his soul, and that 
master was the Christian instinct for service. I once heard him 
declare to an audience that it was the proudest duty of the South 
to accomplish the education of every child in its borders — high or 
low, bond or free, black or white. The only response to his appeal 
was silence. He shouted, " I will make you applaud that senti- 
ment." With strident voice and shaking of the head, after the 
manner of the oratory of the olden time, he plead for human free- 
dom. He pictured to his audience the ruin that may be wrought by 
hate, and the beauty of justice and sympathy until he awakened in 
them the god of justice and gentleness that lies sleeping in the 
human heart, and the applause rolled up to him in a storm. 

Over at Lexington, by the quiet flowing river, and the simple 
hills, Robert E. Lee saw the same vision, because there dwelt in him, 
too, the same simplicity, sincerity and unselfishness. The philo- 



In Memory of J. L. M. Curry. 261 

sophic student of our national story will one day appraise and 
relate how much it meant to that story that the vision of Lee was 
not disturbed nor distorted by dreams or fancies that in all ages 
have beset the brain of the hero of the people. This quiet man at 
Lexington had led mighty armies to victory, and had looked defeat 
and ruin in the face with epic fortitude. He had stood the supreme 
figure amid the fierce joys and shoutings of a mighty war. His name 
rang around the world foremost in the fellowship of the heroes of 
the English race ; but the vision that appeared to Lee, the conqueror 
and warrior, was the same that appeared to Curry, the scholar, and 
student and orator. It was a vision of many millions of childhood 
standing impoverished and untaught amid new duties, new occasions, 
new needs, new worlds of endeavor, appealing with outstretched 
hands to the grown-up strength of their generation, to know why 
they should not have a country to love, an age to serve, a work to do, 
and a training for that work. Alien to this new generation were the 
subtleties of divided sovereignty, or the responsibility for the pres- 
ence of the African in our life, and strange to their eyes and ears 
the fading fires and retreating noises of battle and of war. The 
vision was life — unconquered, tumultuous, beautiful, wholesome, 
regenerative, young life — asking a chance of its elders to live 
worthily in its world and time. The elders had had their day, and 
had had acquaintance with achievement and sadness and defeat, but 
here stood undefeated youth, coming on as comes on a fresh wave 
of the sea, with sunlight in its crest, to take the place of its fellow 
just dashed against the shore. "Life is greater than any theory! 
We ask the right to live !" said this vision. And it touches my heart 
when I recall that I was of that appealing company. 

The Good Master once set a little child in the midst of His 
warring disciples and declared to them that that pathetic little figure 
prefigured to men forever the kingdom of heaven. Again and again 
in the long, dark story of the struggle of the race, that figure has 
appeared, and real greatness of soul has never failed to catch the 
meaning of the radiant presence. We may be sure that it was 
present to William the Silent, and that the German has seen it in 
his dark hours, and the Frenchman and the Englishman, and the 
Greek and all the great races which have brought things to pass. 
Lee and Curry saw it, and thousands of like souls followed their 
leading and found their work and were happy as we are to-day 



262 The Conference for Education. 

with our work lying before us and our hearts asking no other 
blessedness. Let all Americans be grateful to the God of nations 
that He had us enough in His care to choose for us such leaders as 
these, " whose strength was as the strength of ten, because their 
hearts were pure." Lee gave his great example and a few years of 
noble service to the nation, and passed, like Arthur, " while the new 
sun arose upon a new day." A happier fortune befell Dr. Curry. 
There was left to him over two decades of time in which to strive 
for the realization of his dreams and the fulfillment of his plans. 

Our democracy, with its amazing record of achievement in the 
subduing of the continent, has nothing finer to show than the example 
of these two men in a time of great passion and headiness, save 
perhaps the example of another American. Away off in Massachu- 
setts — that great commonwealth from which the nation has learned 
so much of order and moral persistence — a private citizen — George 
Peabody — was bethinking himself of his country, bleeding from the 
red stripes of civil war, and wondering what he could do to heal its 
wounds. I hail him as the pioneer of that splendid army of " volun- 
teer statesmen" who do not hesitate to undertake any work for 
their country's good. It did not matter to him that the states of 
the South had stood to him for four years as the enemy's country. 
His patriotism was not the patriotism of the Cossack, but the patriot- 
ism of the Christ. What he saw was youth which the nation 
needed for its health springing up untrained and sorely burdened — 
the sons of brave men, men who knew how to die for an idea, and 
who did not know how to compromise. What he did was to rise 
clearly above all small passions and to pour his great fortune into 
those stricken states for the benefit alike of the former master and 
of him who had been a slave. Lee, Peabody, Curry ! We will do 
well never to tire of mentioning their names ! An industrial 
democracy threatened constantly with vulgarity and coarse strength 
will have increasing need of the example of their noble calmness 
and patient idealism. 

The General Agency of the Peabody Board and later of the 
Slater Board, two of the noblest creative forces which have ever 
been set to work upon the life of the Republic, came to him as the 
opportunity of his life, and his last years were to be years of unfail- 
ing youth wherein he was able, in the service of these boards, to 
think clearly, to will resolutely, to work joyfully toward high, 



In Memory of J. L. M. Curry. 263 

national ends. The task that confronted him, in its larger lines, 
was to democratize the point of view of an aristocratic society, to 
renationalize its impulses and aspirations, to preach the gospel of 
national unity to both sections, to stimulate the habit of community 
effort for public ends, to enrich the concept of civic virtue, to 
exemplify the ideal of social service to young men, and to set the 
public school, in its proper correlation to all other educational agen- 
cies, in the front of the public mind, as the chief concern of con- 
structive statesmanship. His task, in its more technical aspects, 
was to reveal the public school as it should be, actually at work in 
a democratic society, with all of its necessities — trained and cultured 
teachers, varied curricula appealing to hand and eye and mind, 
industrial training, beautiful surroundings, nourished by public 
pride and strengthened by public confidence. The first ten years of 
his work were years of battle for the development of public opinion, 
and it was to be a great struggle, for many heresies were afield. He 
was told by those who sat in high places that public schools were 
godless, and that the state had no right to tax one man to educate 
another man's child; that it was dangerous to educate the masses, 
and that the educated negro or poor white meant a spoiled laborer, 
and many other musty things dear to the heart of the conscientious 
doctrinaire. His reply to all this was : " Ignorance is no remedy for 
anything. If the state has a right to live at all, it has a right to 
educate. Education is a great national investment." 

And so, that solemn, majestic thing, called public opinion, got 
born, and a few men as earnest as death became somehow what we 
call a movement, and the movement, led by this splendid figure, 
wherein were blended the grace and charm of the old time with the 
vigor and freedom of the new, became a crusade, and young scholars 
had their imaginations touched by it and their creative instincts 
awakened by it, and the preachers saw their way clear to push it 
along, and the politicians, ever sensitive to the lightest wind of 
popular desire, felt its stirrings in the air. Above it all, and energiz- 
ing it all, stood this strong, gifted, earnest man — I had thought to 
say old man, but there was never any suggestion of age about Dr. 
Curry. Like the president of this Conference, he met youth on its 
own ground and asked no odds — impulse for impulse, strength for 
strength and heart for heart. I thank God that, as the things of 
sense faded from his sight, he saw that supremest good of life — an 



264 The Conference for Education. 

honest bit of creative work well done and bearing fruit. At the 
moment of the establishment of the Peabody Fund, it should be 
remembered that not a single Southern State had a system of free 
public schools. The angry gusts of war had blown out all the 
lights burning in their ancient seats of learning, save in the Uni- 
versity of Virginia, Washington and Lee and a few other struggling 
colleges, which burned steadily on, giving light and heat to the 
darkness and coldness of the still land. The splendid system of 
private academies was being slowly re-established. Only in a few 
cities were to be found the semblance of a public school system. 
There were no normal or industrial schools. The Peabody Fund 
came into the field of helpfulness, and during a period of thirty 
years, under the wise administration of great American citizens, 
and directed by the energy and insight of Barnas Sears and J. L. M. 
Curry, expended, in stimulating ways, the sum of $2,478,527.13. 
No more impressive evidence of the influence of this fund and of 
the monumental work of Curry and Sears can be found than in a 
plain recital of these facts : 

In every one of the Southern States to-day there is a public 
system of schools more or less complete. To bring this to pass a 
war-stricken region has expended one hundred and sixty-five 
millions of dollars. Normal and industrial schools for both races, 
sustained by general and local taxation, exist in every state. Thirty 
great institutions of higher learning have been revived and estab- 
lished. Five thousand Southern boys are studying technological 
subjects where ten studied them in 1873. Practically all cities or 
towns of three thousand population maintain a school system from 
which boys and girls may pass into college. The percentage of 
illiteracy for the white race in the twelve Southern States has been 
reduced from 25 per cent to 12.5 per cent, and of the colored race 
from 87 per cent to 48 per cent. And greater than all this, a gen- 
erous and triumphant public sentiment has been aroused that will 
make these performances seem feeble in another decade. Can it be 
claimed that ever before in the history of the Republic so much good 
was accomplished as has been accomplished by the expenditure of 
this $2,478,527.13 plus the heart and brain of men like Curry and 
Sears and their colleagues and followers ? I do not claim, of course, 
that all this wonderful achievement was due solely to these boards 
and to their agents. That would be absurd. The efforts of these 



In Memory of J. L. M. Curry. 265 

boards would have been farcical if they had not been projected upon 
the spirit of a self-reliant and unconquerable people. It was simply 
the meeting of a great idea with a great people and there followed 
a great result. 

The most impressive thing about Dr. Curry was his intense 
Americanism. One could not think of him as an Alabamian or a 
Virginian, but always as an American. He had believed in his youth 
in the theoretical ethics, at least, of Secession. He did not change 
that belief in his old age. Calhoun was second only to Aristotle 
in his regard, and yet he was the most ardent American I have 
ever personally known. The flag stirred his highest eloquence, 
and our great unrended nation, with its dreams, its needs, its perils, 
its ideals, appealed to him like nothing else on earth. In the 
summer of 1898, on July 4, he was making the annual address 
before the University of Chicago. At the same moment, in the 
waters about Santiago, American warships were thundering out 
the knell of Spanish rule on this continent. His subject on that 
occasion was the " Life and Character of John C. Calhoun." He 
was defending the constitutional orthodoxy of that great exponent 
of the compact theory of our government, with all the power and 
passion of his mind and heart. Every now and then a messenger 
boy would arrive with a telegram, and the proceedings would be 
interrupted to read the announcement of the destruction of another 
Spanish ship and to hear the outbursts of frantic, patriotic applause. 
Whereupon Curry would turn to the American flag, draping the 
platform, and make it the basis of an appeal for unity and nation- 
ality, and then when the applause would die away, back again to 
Calhoun without a lost note. And so, the morning passed with 
Calhoun, Santiago and the American flag, vividly entwined before 
the face of a Chicago audience. The incident was something more 
than amusing or dramatic, else I should not pause to relate it. An 
essential characteristic of the man stood revealed. His real genius 
and passion were for adaptability to environment, for sympathy 
with his time, for service on the side of its better forces. He had the 
grand manner and the social instincts of the aristocrat, but at 
bottom he was an individualist in the structure qf his mind. Thomas 
Jefferson — that great spiritual force which the Lord God sent to 
this democracy that it might have fair trial, to teach it patience with 



266 The Conference for Education. 

common men and faith in their unfaihng rectitude — claimed his 
deepest heart. 

His was the first voice to declare that there was no place for a 
Helot in our system and that the negro must be trained properly 
for life in this nation. He was among the first to urge common 
sense as against sentimentality in the education of the negro. He 
denounced vehemently the proposition to divide taxes for educa- 
tional purposes, on the basis of race, as un-American, undemocratic, 
un-Christian, unwise. He it was who first pointed out that the 
strategic point of the whole educational battle was the untaught 
white man and his child. He was the first to thunder out to colleges 
and universities that education was one whole thing, and that the 
colleges and universities must come out of their isolation, and, 
under the operation of the principle of noblesse oblige, lead the 
fight for the education of all the people. He sent home to our 
people their share of responsibility, and he also made the world 
know something of the courage and patience and self-reliance of 
the Southern struggle for self-realization, and he made the world 
believe that there was strength and purpose enough in this people 
to solve their own problems with justice and wisdom. In the dis- 
charge of all of these duties of the pioneer and the propagandist, no 
man in America, since Horace Mann, has shown such energy and 
enthusiasm as J. L. M. Curry. ■ He had the genius for giving him- 
self out, and the equipment of intellect and temperament necessary 
for his many-sided duties. Before the legislatures of every state, 
from the Potomac to the Gulf, from college platforms, in great 
national gatherings, by country cross-roads, and in little villages 
wherein some impulse stirred a community to better its life, his 
voice was heard for twenty years. 

I saw him for the first time in 1883. A thriving North Caro- 
lina town was proposing to tax itself for adequate school facilities. 
This was not then an every-day occurrence in North Carolina. Curry 
stood before them and plead with passion and power for the chil- 
dren of the community. I remember how he seized a little child 
impulsively, and with dramatic instinct placed his hand upon his 
curly head, and pictured to the touched and silent throng the mean- 
ing of a little child to human society. It was the first time I had ever 
heard a man of such power spend himself so passionately in such a 
cause. I had seen and heard men speak in that way about personal 



In Memory of J. L. M. Curry. 267 

religion and heaven and hell, and struggles and wrongs long past, 
but never before about childhood. It seemed to me, and to all young 
men who heard him, that here was a vital thing to work for, here 
indeed a cause to which a man might nobly attach himself, feeling 
sure that, though he himself might fail, the cause would go march- 
ing grandly on. 

And now, what is the lesson of this sincere inspiring life, for 
we are not here to mourn Dr. Curry or to recount in formal fashion 
the details of his life or to enumerate his specific achievements, to 
catalogue the honors of his long life. I know of no happier life than 
Dr. Curry's. There is not an earnest man here who does not thrill 
at the thought of living such a life of work, and of making such an 
end of triumph. We do, indeed, sorrow in our deepest hearts, with 
her to whom his daily presence meant strength and joy, and who 
was to him all of this and more. We sorrow, too, with his son and 
his kindred. We do, indeed, miss him here and everywhere — we 
miss the tonic of his unconquerable youth, his noble mien and pres- 
ence, the vibrant tone of his voice, the old-fashioned eloquence out 
of the heart, the garnered wisdom and experience, the sympathy, 
the vitality, the holiness of the man. My own heart has a sense of 
loneliness for the loss of him, for I loved him as men love one 
another, as the younger man sometimes loves the elder who has 
reached out to him warm, strong hands of sympathy, helping him 
thus to live loyally with his higher self, and who has stood to his 
sight an embodied ideal. But " we wage not any feud with death." 
It is the commonplace of life. It is taught everywhere in nature 
and in literature, by the bright-winged ephemera that flutter about 
in the golden sunshine after the spring rains, and by the solemn 
imagery running through human writing wherein life is likened 
to the flying cloud, the stuff of dreams, the fleeting shadows and the 
vapor that vanisheth away. The strongest of us all shall shortly, 
as time runs, be otherwhere, even as our dead friend and leader, 
and the children playing in the fields shall stand in our places doing 
the world's work. Matthew Arnold in " Dover Beach" calls his 
love to the window and bids her hear the grating roar of the pebbles 
on the shore, bringing to his mind, as to Sophocles long ago on 
the ^gean, the eternal ebb and flow of human misery. They must 
love each other he says pitifully, for the bright-seeming world 
lying before them has really neither light, nor hope, nor love, nor 



268 The Conference for Education. 

certitude, nor peace, nor help from pain. Such a hfe as Dr. Curry's, 
with its eager zest, its joyous desire to be at work, its perception of 
human dignity and worth, puts such pessimism out of thought and 
soul, and teaches that the high analogies and impulses of life come 
not from the moaning sea, but from the glad, renewing earth, and 
from undismayed, advancing life. 

The chief work then of this noble life was to develop an irre- 
sistible public opinion in a democracy for the accomplishment of 
permanent public ends. In short, through such work as his in one 
generation of grim purpose and intellectual audacity, the South has 
lost its economic distinctness and has become a part of American 
life and American destiny, and the North has learned to love, I 
trust, its brothers whom it did not know and, therefore, could not 
understand. Men may forget the oratory, the diplomacy, the intel- 
lectual vigor, the gracious, compelling charm of Curry the man, 
but they will not forget the zeal, the self-surrender of Curry the 
social reformer and civic patriot; and when the final roll shall be 
called of the great sons of the South, and of the nation, who served 
society well when service was most needed, I believe that no answer 
will ring out clearer, and higher and sweeter in that larger air than 
the Adsum of J. L. M. Curry. I trust that the State of Alabama, 
whose citizenship he adorned, may have wisdom enough to reserve 
one of its niches in the national capitol for a statue of this man, not 
only in recognition of his great services but to emphasize the fact 
that a man may be a statesman or a hero, as well by service to child- 
hood and ideals of training, as by subtlety in constitutional argument 
or bold courage in war. His work has been accomplished and has 
been handed on to the living, and he has gone. His fame is secure, 
for it is the persistent fame of the teacher and reformer. 

Marcus Aurelius in his tent on the Danube tells how he learned 
discipline from Rusticus, and kindness from Sextus, and patience 
from Alexander, mentioning one by one his old teachers, and their 
names glow there forever beside their pupil's — the pure pagan — 
shining like stars in that heathen light. In such ways does the 
teacher live on through generations, teaching in death as in life. Is 
it not the task of the living to take this public opinion, now ductile 
and shapable, and fashion it into scientific, active forces, and realize 
it in ever greater and more enduring institutions and agencies for 
the betterment of man? Is it not our task, gaining strength from 



In Memory of J. L. M. Curry. 269 

the example of this dead leader of ours, to press forward with 
patience and quiet resolve, not to be deterred, not to be made afraid, 
not to despair, not to listen to any voices save those voices within 
us, which tell us that such work cannot die? Surely this work 
we are in is the nation's work, and this nation is a great spiritual 
and moral adventure worth living for and working for, as well as 
dying for. 

Earnest, simple men, like him of whom we have spoken, have 
hallowed its past by upright living and patriotic purpose. Strong, 
■stout souls hear the call to battle for the integrity of its present life, 
and hints and prophecies of its wide and liberal future sing in the 
hearts of the long, bright line of invincible youth to whose freedom 
we stand pledged, even as there stood pledged to us, the high- 
statured men of the olden time. 

The audience was dismissed, after the Benediction by the Rev. 
Lyman Abbott, LL.D., of New York City. 



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